THAT D'UH! MOMENT

Hello, lovely readers! It's been a while since I've updated, I know - I've been spending a lot of energy rewriting and refreshing posts for my Patreon, a lot more energy settling into my RLF post at York St John University, and what was left over working on the new WIP.

And it's the new WIP that's been causing me to tear my hair out. You see, two days a week I've now got access to a lovely quiet office in York from 9am until 6pm. There's light, heat, a window, a computer and the internet - not to mention my WIP notebook and the copious amounts of stationery I've ferried over there, plus ready access to coffee and the odd snack - which ought to be everything that I need to work.

Now of course, I'm there to see students and help them to improve their writing. But currently it's quiet (things pick up toward exam deadlines) so most days I have a few free periods, or even a whole free morning or afternoon in which to work in total peace, plus the time after my work day finishes but before the Student Centre closes and I need to leave my office. No dog that needs walking, no parent calling me in a panic over a leaking roof or virus-infected computer, no meals to cook (I'm staying in a hotel), no cleaning or other household chores to do. It ought to be bliss! I ought to be churning out thousands of words! I even made myself a Pacemaker schedule confidently expecting huge amounts of progress!

I haven't managed to write more than one or two awful, stilted paragraphs on any day that I've been in York.

It's baffling and infuriating. This is a book that I am super excited about. I mean, super excited. I LOVE this idea. I've been sitting bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night to scribble down ideas in my notebook, I love it so much. I've done my research. My Pinterest board is stuffed. I have a playlist on Spotify and a white noise mood track on Noisili. My agent loves it. My editor loves it. I'm ready.

And yet... no words.

What's going on?

What's going on is I'm being deeply stupid, is what.

I realised it yesterday, and it made me want to smack myself in the forehead.

When I first went full-time as a writer I used to get up early, do all my household stuff (cleaning, walking the dog, breakfast, whatever) and get myself into my study by nine... and then sit there, staring at the screen in mounting frustration, wanting to write, needing to write, but paralysed. There just weren't any words! WHERE WERE THE WORDS??

It took me weeks to work out what the problem was and work out methods around it - many of which I shared with you on the blog over the years.

Don't sit down at 9am and expect yourself to write for three or four hours straight off. It's far too intimidating and your brain freezes up. Set a timer and work for half an hour or forty minutes, as fast as you can, then break and do something else for five or ten minutes (check emails, Facebook, get a new coffee, stretch) before you look over what you've done. Forty minutes is way more manageable than three hours - and usually you've then broken the morning-blankness and can carry on in forty minute sprints until you're done for the day. But even if you can't, you'll often surprise yourself with how much you can write in a timed sprint like that - certainly more than you'd write if you stared at a white screen for an hour and then gave up.

If you get well and truly stuck, don't just sit there staring at the screen until you either cry or get a migraine, or both. Get out. Work somewhere else - the library, a coffee shop - or if you can't face that, go for a walk, get the blood pumping, think about your story and what makes it special, work through the problem in your head.

Write longhand so that you remember this is just scribbles, just noodling about with ideas, getting stuff wrong so that you can work out what to get RIGHT, not deathless prose that needs to be perfect.

Don't sit down with vague ideas like 'Today I've got to get Sarah from the bridge over the river to the Capital City'. Some days - great days - you'll be inspired and can take a boring task like that and run with it, but MOST days you'll spend ages trying to just figure out WHAT COMES NEXT because it's so non-specific and anyway what you want to write is the scene where Sarah gets to the Capital and runs into the King's Guard. Always jot down a quick plan the day before, a few bullet points that will act as a road map to what you want to achieve, the shape of the next section. For instance:

•  Sarah wakes up under the bridge (covered in dew? Frogs in hair? Stiff and damp)
• Wearily washes in icy water while remembering swimming in river as a child (family memories! Better times)
• Packs up (brief descrip) and slogs down hill
• Avoids riders on the road in case it's Kings Guard, then hitches ride w/friendly farmer
• Arrives in city, smells food, feels lifting of spirits, crosses through City Gate (jostling other people, seeing Castle on the hill)...
• Bumps straight into Captain of the Guard!

Even if the scene you want to write is really cool and you're dead keen to get started on it, it can be a bit scary to start cold - especially if there are lots of actiony bits or subtle foreshadowing or information threading you need to do. Make a quick note of what you need the scene to accomplish just so that you're not searching for WHAT HAPPENS NEXT at the same time as figuring out the words to describe it. It's much easier to find great words to describe something you've already visualised and can imagine perfectly.

Dear Readers, I know all of this. This is how I work. It's how I've worked for over six years. And yet. I've basically been rocking up to my RLF office at the uni at 8:50am every morning, logging into my OneDrive and sitting there staring at a blank page in my Word doc, waiting for words to come. That's not going to happen. I can't even describe how much it's not going to happen. I know this. AND. YET.

During my lunch break yesterday I went for that long walk. I was feeling so cross with myself, and really gloomy. I didn't even want to eat, which anyone who knows me knows is Bad Juju. But as I wandered around the leaf-strewn Minster Park - with glowering brow and slumped shoulders - I slowly, slowly felt my brain clearing.

I realised I should have gone for a walk an hour before instead of just sitting there during that free period staring at my computer and willing the monitor to burst into flames. And that reminded me of all the other things I normally do on a working day - and eventually I worked out what was going on. Finally. It was a true D'UH! moment. I had to sit down on a bench for a little bit just to comprehend it, and to sigh with relief and actually appreciate the autumn colours I'd been way too grumpy to look at before.

This is is a lesson. Stupidity can happen to anyone, and that includes professional writers. You can spend years figuring out the best methods of working for you, but when faced with a new situation it's all too easy to revert to bad habits. And even the very best methods (and mine have worked pretty well for me so far) will be useless if you don't employ them. Basically, I'd been cheerfully sabotaging myself for weeks and then wondering why I wasn't getting anywhere.

*Le Sigh*

I hope no one else is self-sabotaging at the moment, but if so, and you're reading this? Knock that right off, muffins. Tell me all about it in the comments.

WHEN BIC WON'T DO THE TRICK

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back my lovelies! The hiatus is over. I hope everyone had a happy Christmas and Merry New Year, whatever your version of those things would ideally be. I mostly tried to relax and not stress out over all the things that TV and films and adverts try to tell you that you ought to stress out about, and I mostly succeeded, so: win.

Before I launch into today's post - which has nothing to do with the noble line of budget ballpoint pens, I promise! - I have a couple of bits of business. Firstly, I highly recommend this post by the wise and venerable Terri Windling about perfectionism and how it's not nearly as good a thing as people would have you believe. She says:

"...we're responsible for being the artist we are...not the one that someone else (or our own Inner Critic) thinks we ought to be instead."

Which happened to be just exactly what I needed to be reminded in that moment. So thank you, Terri!

The other bit of business is a lovely announcement - I'm going to be doing a panel event at the London Book Fair this year. It'll be my first ever appearance at the LBF and it's set to be FABULOUS because not only is delightful chum Liz de Jager, author of The Blackheart Legacy going to be on the panel with me, but the panel itself is coolness x3. It's title is The Dark Arts: Writing Fantasy and Horror for Young Adults, and the other panelists will be Josh Winning, and Sally Green! The panel will be on Tuesday the 14th of April at 16:00. I can hardly believe I'll get to be a part of it, and although I know that the LBF is a bit different than the YALC event at the WFCC last year, if any Dear Readers would like to come along, I'll be delighted to see you.

Now onto today's topic: when BIC just won't do the trick.

When I say BIC, I am of course referring to that well known axiom for writers: Butt In Chair. It's the idea that no matter what happens - whether you feel a bit stuffy-headed or generally uninspired or you'd really rather read the new Cassandra Clare book or spend the day arguing with that one infuriating Makorra shipper on Tumblr - when your chosen writing time comes around, you sit your rear end down and pick up the pen or open the laptop and do the thing.

Even if you sit there for the entire hour or the entire day typing the same paragraph over and over again, the theory goes, you still keep your butt sat in that chair. Because a) if you make sitting down in readiness to write a habit, your brain will soon get the idea and train you to be receptive and productive during this time, since it will realise that you're not going to give up do something more interesting no matter how it tries to distract you and b) true, elusive inspiration is far more likely to visit the writer who is already scribbling their brains out than the one who is trying to beat their high score on Candy Crush.

All of this is true, and I myself have many times advised people to adhere to BIC if they're having trouble feeling inspired. One of the first lessons that published writers learn, when the reality of deadlines sinks in, is that you can still produce decent, perhaps even excellent work, when you actually don't much feel like writing at all. And that quite often, if you force yourself through your first feelings of tiredness or sadness or just-can't-be-bothered-ness, you find yourself cheerfully plugging away without much difficulty after all.

BIC is an antidote to the much abused idea of writer's block, which is often interpreted by the less experienced writers among us to mean that if you don't feel fired up with the effervescent joy of inspiration it's totally fine to marathon Breaking Bad on Netflix until you DO. Which, no. Books don't get written that way. However, I'm not in the camp who believes that writer's block is a mythical invention of pretentious layabouts who just want an excuse to make themselves interesting without actually doing any work. I've written a defense of writer's block - or what I call writing roadblocks - here, but I make it clear that the main way to fix it is to keep writing anyway.

However, last week I had a slightly different experience, which I'd like to talk about now.

I'd been pootling away happily on BaBBook since the end of Christmas and had just written a scene which I thought was pretty darn good. I finished work for the day, counted up my words - word count for the day AND the week exceeded, hurray! - and saved everything to my flashdrive with a sense of satisfaction and no inkling that anything was rotten in the state of Denmark at all.

And then the next day I sat down to write the next scene, which immediately followed on from the one I'd completed the day before... and I choked.

(Not literally)

Despite BIC, despite picking up my pen and opening my notebook and telling myself 'Just scribble for half an hour and see what comes out', despite knowing exactly what I wanted to write, and even having been excited and enthusiastic about writing it, a tiny voice in the back of my head was basically chanting Shan't won't nope you can't make me NYER.

I was confused and upset. I hadn't slammed into a mental block like that for a long time. Normally these days 'writer's block' for me is either about a failure in planning or knowledge (fixed by a quick list of my priorities for the next section scribbled on a Post It, or a flip through my notes, reference books or, occasionally, the internet) or about some external thing, like being tired or not feeling well. In either case, now that I'm not being poisoned by my boiler I can push through it because, underneath all that, I really do WANT to write. I want to get on with things and see how the story and the characters will develop next. But not that day. That day I felt like my fingers were physically refusing to move and it was a bit frightening, honestly.

After staring at my lovely blank page for about an hour and giving myself a slight headache, I took a break. The break ended up consuming my whole day as I procrastinated like an actual, literal, professional procrastinator. I mean, it's not that I haven't previously reached Olympic levels of procrastination. It's just that this time I couldn't understand WHY. Normally I can at least diagnose myself enough to know it's because the next scene is going to be traumatic or really tricky, or just because my depression is telling me I'm rubbish and I'm afraid to prove it. But it didn't seem to be any of that. When a second day passed in much the same way and I started to get a sinking feeling of dread.

What on earth was going on?

And then, during a chat with a member of my writing group, I had a thought. The thought related to the line edit of Frail Mortal Heart which I had completed and returned to my editor shortly after New Year. Normally by the line edit stage I've read and revised the manuscript so many times that I'm convinced the whole thing is unrepentant dreck, but because of the long period in the middle of this year when I couldn't look at my computer or do much work at all (due to CO poisoning, as we now know) I was coming to this one with much fresher eyes, and I found to my surprise and delight that I really rather enjoyed reading it again.

The best part was about three quarters of the way through when two very important threads of the story suddenly melded and produced an emotional BOOM in a way that I hadn't planned out at all. I had no idea I was even aiming at that effect. I didn't know it was coming and it really hit home. The perpetrator was my subconscious - the place where true inspiration lurks, and which can sometimes make that sudden instinctive leap, transforming great craft into actual art - working away behind the scenes, nudging me to tweak and edit, take a word out here, add a line there, and eventually create a scene which brought tears to my eyes.

So I thought about my block on BaBBook and I thought: hey, maybe my subconscious is at it again, nudging me - a bit more forcefully this time - and trying to tell me something. But what? Could it really be as simple as, Just Don't Write That Next Scene? But if it was, why? And what *was* I supposed to write next?

Almost immediately, the frustrated, constipated, Shan't Won't Nope You Can't Make Me NYER feeling dissipated. My cunning back brain, satisfied that I wasn't trying to bludgeon it to silence with BIC, suddenly began to cooperate, opening up doors to some floaty little scraps of ideas that I hadn't even noticed before because I thought I knew what I was supposed to be doing.

I pondered this while I cooked an elaborate pasta dish with homemade cheese sauce (the secret is to add Worcestor Sauce, mustard, and a dash of nutmeg by the way) took the dog for a long, slow walk, and eventually popped into my writing group to discuss it while listening to calming folk music.
What if... what if rather than writing the next chronological scene right now, I saved it for later in the book? Yes, showing it NOW, in its technically correct place in the story, would be thrilling and exciting, a great piece of action before a more quiet section. But that was all it would be. The reader would certainly know that the heroine wasn't going to die at this point so there'd be tension but not real fear. In fact, this scene, which had previously seemed inevitable and almost unavoidable, would be more like... well, predictable. Maybe even a little... unnecessary?

But if I held it back, maybe teased the reader with fragments and fleeting flashes of what had happened, and jumped the narrative and the heroine forward in time... then I could keep that whole piece of action for later in the story. Then it would no longer seem predictable. Then it would not only offer the reader thrilling action but also truly great emotional impact. It would serve as something much greater than a set piece - it would be a characterisation bombshell, turning the status quo of the story on its head. It would be *beautiful*.

And what's more, if I worked it that way, many other tiny issues which I hadn't quite figured out how to tackle yet would suddenly click into place, functioning together like a well oiled watch to add to rising tension and the reader's investment. I wouldn't even have to DO anything. It just... worked that way.

My subconscious was a bloody genius.

Despite the several days delay while I worked all this out, I'm now back on target with my wordcount and, more importantly, having whizzbang fun writing the current section of the story with a twist that I had never envisaged at the planning stage. And what does all this come down to? That sometimes when you get blocked, it's for a reason. It could be for the reasons I mentioned before - gaps in planning or knowledge or because of external factors - but sometimes it's just that you need a couple of days to work out a different way, an unexpected way, a better way, for the story to play out.

Yes, I could probably, with great effort, have BICed my way through this crisis. I could have forced myself to put words down on the page. But those words wouldn't have been the right words. They'd have been perfectly fine words, no doubt, and it's not like the entire story would have failed if I hadn't come up with this nifty alternate way of working this section. But it would have been less than it could have been. Less interesting, less fun, just less good.

So although you do need to give yourself permission to suck sometimes, and you do need to remember that you can't fix a blank page, and first drafts aren't meant to be perfect... there are times when you also need to listen to the little voice blowing raspberries in your back brain and admit that your first, unthinking ideas on how to execute something might not be the only or the best way. And then let your subconscious have its say. Something to think about.

And now... SURPRISE MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS NO-JUTSU!

A QUESTION OF JEDI MINDTRICKS

Hello, my lovelies! Happy Wednesday! Today's post is in answer to a reader question, but before I get started, I bring tidings of great joy! THE NAME OF THE BLADE has been nominated for the Teenreads.com Teen Choice Book of the Year 2014! Voting for the winner will run between now and the beginning of February next year, so if you've enjoyed the book and would like to see it get a little more attention head over here to the poll and voice your opinion (you can vote for up to five books, not just mine).

Also, any reviews for the US version of the book there on Amazon.com would be greatly, greatly appreciated. I know that's a pain for US Dear Readers who've already reviewed the UK version of the book, since those reviews *should* have been transferred across. But I emailed Amazon.com about it and their response was basically 'Meh'. So... it's down to us to do something about the lonely, four-review status of the book. I appreciate the readers who've already done so more than I can say. But I love you all anyway. Mwah!

Now onto today's question, which was left in the comments by Anon:

I had a quick question in which I'd like to ask if you do not mind. I was interested to find out how you center yourself and clear your thoughts prior to writing. I have had a tough time clearing my thoughts in getting my thoughts out. I truly do take pleasure in writing however it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes tend to be wasted just trying to figure out how to begin. Any suggestions or tips? Many thanks!

Anon, this is a problem I'm sure most writers and creative people have. I know that the fantastic YA writer Melinda Lo, for instance, needs to meditate for a short while each day before beginning work in order to centre herself. It's a little strange, because if you're anything like me you spend a lot of time doing regular day to day tasks - shopping, cleaning, walking the dog - with your brain just buzzing with your character's voices and bits of descriptions and actions you can't wait to write. But as soon as you actually sit down to do so? Suddenly your head is filled with the regular day to day tasks instead! Frustrating.

I've got an advantage because I have my Writing Cave, a teeny-tiny box room which is filled with books and a computer and pretty much nothing else. When I go in there my brain *knows* that we're about to get down to business and so I find it easier to clear my head and start work (sometimes I swear, as soon as I walk in I can feel my synapses give out a little sigh of relief). But on days when I'm stressed or tired or just not feeling all that creative, it can still be really tough to stop other thoughts from getting in the way of the words. So I do have a few strategies that I use to shove all that annoying real stuff out of the front of my head to make room for my story.

MUSIC: I'm a little more music obsessed than the average bear (although not as obsessed as the famous Maggie Stiefvater, whose eye-wateringly extensive playlists can be found all over her blog and Tumblr) and make multiple playlists for each book, and sometimes specific ones for each character or for important relationships or events. But you don't have to be a tunes-nerd to utilise the benefits of music to help you focus and get your head into a creative space! You don't even need to be one of those writers who listens to music as they work - I know plenty of people who can't stand it, but don't worry about that. That's not what we're doing here.

Set aside an afternoon to browse on Spotify or YouTube and find a song that really speaks to you - you know the kind I'm talking about, one that makes you stop whatever you're doing for a moment as soon as you hear the opening notes, that gives you a little shiver down your spine when it opens up. If it's a tune that relates in some way to your current book, that's great, but it doesn't have to be. It just needs to be a piece of music that speaks to you.

Download said piece of music and the next time you come to write, after your document or your notebook is open and you're ready to begin, stop - and play the song. Listen to it with your whole heart, feel it, let it move you. When it's finished, hopefully the buzzing thoughts will have calmed down a bit and you'll feel the stillness and inner quiet you need to start putting words down. 

PLANNING: Sometimes your head is full of anxiety and stress because you know the upcoming scene is really important and you're not sure you have the skills to pull it off. This worry can block the brain like nothing else, and before you know it your thoughts have gone off on a merry, procrastinating joy-ride, fixating on the cracks in the ceiling, the not-very-interesting thing you saw on TV last night, or your plans for great-aunt Miriam's birthday present next May: in short, ANYTHING but the thing you actually need to concentrate on.

At this point, whether you're an outliner or a pantser, a little bit of planning can really help. Not too much! Don't panic! Get a Post-It or the back of an envelope and a pencil and make yourself a little bullet-pointed list of three or five or ten things you need to accomplish in this scene. John and Beth argue/Beth storms out/John watches Beth from window and has revelation about feelings/John sees fireball fly over castle wall and immolate Beth/John screams in primal rage, turns into purple gorilla and smashes way out of window to destroy everyone. There!

You don't have to stick to this list of things - but by having defined what you're here to accomplish, you've sneakily slid your brain sideways into focus on the story in a no pressure sort of way. When  the list is finished, generally you feel calmer and better able to begin. 

TAKING THE PRESSURE OFF: Sometimes all the stars align right, the writing gods smile on you, you roll out of bed bright and early and find that you have a whole day or half day (or whatever) with nothing to do but write. No distractions, no worries, nothing else to accomplish. It's going to be amazing! You sit down. And you stare at the blank computer screen/page. And stare. And stare some more. AND NOTHING COMES OUT.

Why? Too much pressure! The idea of dedicating a whole day or several long hours in a row to nothing but writing feels exciting, but in practice it can often make your brain freeze up. So come at it a different way. Set your phone or your alarm to beep in half an hour or forty minutes and tell yourself that you need to write as many words as possible in that time. When you're done, you're done. The rest of the day is free. GO!

This might sound like the opposite of 'taking the pressure off' but it works really well. Now you have a short-term goal which is much less scary than 'spend the entire day creating deathless prose' and you don't have any time to hang around. It jumpstarts you creatively and you may find that you write a surprising amount for such a short period of time. You may also find that at the end of your thirty of forty minutes you're desperate to continue - which is fine - or that you're exhausted and happy to stop - also fine! Either way, you'll have accomplished much more than you would have if you'd spent two hours staring at your blank page before finally bursting into tears, fleeing to your favourite blankie, and curling into the fetal position. 

JUST RESIGN YOURSELF: Even with all these Jedi mindtricks, there are still times when your brain simply will not shut up and you cannot seem to get into the proper writing mood. You know that anything you write for at least the first twenty minutes is going to be rubbish.

So? Resign yourself to that and write anyway.

Just because the first few paragraphs or pages will need a lot of rewriting, that doesn't mean the rest of your work for the day won't be excellent and well-worth committing to the page. It doesn't mean you should waste hours fruitlessly trying to inspire yourself in increasingly bizarre ways, or give up completely, either. This is one of the first lessons that full-time writers learn: sometimes you just have to push through and write, even when you don't feel like it.

In almost every case, after half an hour or so, the effort to put words down loosens up my cramped creative brain and I start to feel happy and inspired after all. So what if it takes a page of dross to get me there? It's worth it!

I hope this helps, Anon! Read you next week, everyone :)

WHEN DID THURSDAY GET HERE?

Hello, Dear Readers, and happy Thursday (Friday's almost here!). Today's first order of business is to direct you to my book birthday interview with picturebook author and illustrator Cara Vulliamy on Author Allsorts. Her new book, Bubble & Squeak, is out today. If you're interested in illustration and picturebooks I think you'll find it very interesting.

Next, I need to talk about InCreWriMa. Last year the whole month of May was International Creative Writing May on this blog, and I loved it. I think we all got a lot of work done - well, I know I did, about 30k in that month alone, which is amazing for me - and supported each other really well. I was fully intending to run that again this year, but then last week Wonder Editor emailed me to say that she hoped to get the second round of The Name of the Blade Bk #2 edits to me either this or next week. Which means instead of InCreWriMa it's going to be ZoRiHeHaOuMa (Zolah Ripping Her Hair Out May) and I'm unlikely to get any new work done at all. Sorry! If I manage to get the edits done before the end of the month it's possible we could have an International Creative Writing June. If not, it'll be InCreWriJul. That's if anyone is interested, of course? Let me know in comments.

In other news, can I just say how astonished I am at the level of interest in The Night Itself on Goodreads? It has more adds now and is on more To-Read lists than some of my *published* books. This is astonishing and very pleasing indeed, and is of course muchly down to you, my dears, and your buzzing. I love you all. Thank you.

Now, I was going to write a really long thinky post today about online piracy and the idea that writers owe their readers free stuff - in fact, I have several thousand words of it right here - but yesterday was a day of great personal drama and this morning my brain is mashmallow. I can't seem to tease out the ideas that I really wanted to explore, at least not in a way that's going to make sense for anyone else. So instead of subjecting you to a subpar post (or myself to anymore grinding of teeth) I'm going to take the pooch for a very long walk and hope that sun and clouds and water will make everything feel a bit clearer.

See you next week, duckies. Have a great weekend :)

A QUESTION OF LETTING GO

Hello, Dear Readers! Today I'm answering a question from blog commentor Cherie, who says:

"...my biggest issue is THE NOTEBOOK. I quite like the chapter [I've written]. I had fun writing it and I was excited to write the next one. But there are a couple of mistakes I know I've made and My Brain was not letting me write any more in case I made more mistakes, because it feels like I'm doing a disservice to the notebook. Like, the notebook doesn't deserve to have mistakes in it. The notebook's worth is detracted because of the mistakes. The notebook has been rendered not good enough and now I feel I can't write in it.

Naturally, I turned to the ever-useful Microsoft Word. I wrote another couple of chapters and then realised that typing the stories instead of writing them took all of the fun out of it and made me not want to write any more. And I'm also notorious for deleting files on a whim - anything I had written went straight to the recycle bin after I glanced it over and saw a sentence that didn't quite go well, along with an all-consuming dread that I failed as a writer etc. I've tried writing on scraps of paper, on the back of receipts, with pens running out of ink or in pencil so it already looked messy, but it hasn't worked. I then tried writing but not looking it over afterwards, but that was doomed to work just as much as giving an incredibly inquisitive 5-year-old a box and then telling them not to open it."

Cherie, you've really twisted yourself up into a Gordian Knot over this, haven't you? There you were, just writing away - no big deal - having fun, liking what you were doing... and the next thing you know you literally can't write a word anywhere - not even on the back of a receipt - because fear and doubt and insecurity have got you wrapped up so tightly that they've strangled all your creativity.

First of all, I'm going to recommend that you read a post I made for someone else, which is called Take A Deep Breath. All the advice therein applies to you too.

Now for some specific recommendations based on the specific details you've given me. Just to make it clear for all the people out there to whom this advice would be like arsenic candy covered in broken glass - I'm not saying the following advice is going to be helpful for everyone. No. I know some writers hate longhand, or need to self-edit as they go, or both. Or other variations! That's fine. There is no One True Way. This advice is for Cherie and the writers like her. Move along there.

I understand your notebook problem, my duckie. Sometimes I have treated my notebooks with a bit too much reverence too. I had some really beautiful notebooks - expensive notebooks - which had been sitting on my shelves gathering dust for years because I didn't want to mess them up with my scribblings and crossings out and crumpled Post-Its. I felt as if those notebooks deserved better. They deserved something special. Some magical story that would be WORTHY of them.

You know what I worked out? All notebooks deserve one thing and that is TO BE USED. The point of your notebook's existence is for someone to write in it, whether the writing is grocery lists or the next great novel. That's all your notebook wants or deserves. Your notebook might as well have been put through a rinse cycle in the washing machine, or set on fire, or never made at all, if the only thing it ever does its whole life is to sit on a shelf or in a drawer somewhere being ignored. 

However, if this is a bit too much for you to accept right now, then switch strategies. I'm going to recommend that you stop trying to write in a notebook - or on the back of old scraps of paper - and get one of these.

Narrow or wide ruled, doesn't matter. As cheap as you like. Your supermarket probably makes them for less than a pound. It's not a notebook or even a notepad. It's just a block of lined paper, and the paper pulls loose very easily. Each time you finish filling up one side of a page you pull it loose from the block and put it aside, face down, so that you can't see what you've just written.

I'm going to advise that you switch from pens to pencils. Everything looks less formal and finished written in pencil. Get some cheap mechanical pencils if you can. They're good because they weigh nothing, don't need sharpening, and come with an eraser on the end.

And you know how you said that expecting yourself not to go back and re-read what you've written was like giving a present to a five year old and asking them not to open it? Well, Cherie, you're not a five year old. You need to develop the ability not to look at what you have written if doing so is going to paralyse you. There's nothing wrong with writers self-editing if that's natural and helpful to them; but clearly it is anything but for you. Clearly catching a glimpse at unedited pages like that is hurting you. So stop it.

Put those pages aside and leave them alone, and get on with writing a *new* page and moving your story forward. I know you can do it, and if you want to ever finish this story you're writing that is what you will have to do. 

Why am I recommending these specific things? Because I've been just where you are, Cherie. When I was writing Shadows on the Moon I got stuck after about three chapters and I stayed stuck for over SIX MONTHS. This happened because one day, on a whim, I went back and started re-reading at the beginning of the Word Doc. where I had been typing up my notes. Doing so sent me into a death spiral because those first three chapters? They were AWFUL. Terrible. No good. Sucktastic to the max.

I'm not exaggerating here.

Like you, after being confronted with my own mistakes I was paralysed with the feeling that I was unworthy of my story, that everything I wrote was flawed, that it was pointless even to try to go on because this book would never be finished and even if it was it would be utter dreck, an unfixable black hole that would never resemble anything worthwhile. But guess what?

I was wrong. Eventually I snapped out of it and I finished that book. I edited it. I revised it. I edited it a bunch more times with my editor and then a copy-editor and then my U.S. editor and copy-editor, and the book went out there into the world and became something I am incredibly proud of. Some people have loved it. Others have hated it. I don't care, because I know it's the best work I could do.

The way I broke free was to put aside my fancy expensive notebook and my special writing pens and to scribble all over loose sheets of paper which I set in a messy pile and occassionally shuffled into place and shoved into a cardboard folder, WITHOUT LOOKING.

Maybe once or twice a week, I'd open the folder and get out the pages I'd written that week and type them up. As I did I'd find hundreds of mistakes and be plagued by insecurity and hopelessness all over again, just like you are. But here's the thing: Typing these mistake-riddled notes up gave me the chance to CHANGE them. To improve and make them better. I caught dozens of mistakes and ripped those little suckers out of there and knew that what ended up in my Word Doc. was so much better than it had been before.

This method didn't magically cure my fear, just as it won't magically cure yours. But it freed me up enough to get me putting words down on the page again, and that is the number one most important thing for a writer to do. That's all. That's it.

It doesn't matter if those words suck like a force ten hurricane. In fact, they OUGHT to suck. For every perfect phrase or line or paragraph you come up with, most likely you will need to write five or ten that are utter, utter cr*p. That is OK. It's OK! You can fix it. I promise. You can fix anything! Writing IS re-writing. It's part of the process and everyone, every genuis writer that you've ever looked up to, had to go through it. Because you can fix anything - really anything - except a blank page.

Let's review. 

STEP ONE: Put Down The Notebook Of Doom. Replace it with a cheap refill pad and some pencils. Know that when you scribble using these, you are simply aiming to write notes for your first draft - notes which will be re-written and revised many times in the future - not some mythical, flawless, perfect novel.

STEP TWO: Stop Tormenting Yourself. Put the pages aside when you've scribbled on them and don't look. No excuses. Just pull up those big girl panties, turn the page face down and keep writing.

STEP THREE: Reconcile Yourself To Revision. Once a week or whenever is convenient, type your scribbles from the loose pages into a Word Doc. and edit them, knowing all the while that this is merely one of the first steps in a long process of drafting and that you will re-write and revise this manuscript many more times before it is ready to be shared with the world.

STEP FOUR: Keep Going. Repeat Steps One to Three until the book is finished.

If I can manage this, honey, I know that you can. Good luck!

THE STATE OF THE WRITING CAVE

Today's blog title comes from the 'State of the Nation' address made by the President of the United States. Obviously the work that goes on in my Writing Cave is far more important than running a country or whatever, so I thought I'd flatter that poor Obama guy with some imitation. It'll make him feel important.

Aw. You can tell he's moved.

Anyway! Happy Thursday to all. Since the FrostFire Blog Tour is now officially over we're back to our regular posting schedule of Tuesday and Thursday, and it seemed like a good time to update you on what's going on around here and what I'm working on.

So back in this post I told you that my editor decided to do a sort of awesomeness-overhaul of The Night Itself (Katana Trilogy Book #1) at pretty much the eleventh hour. Working on that has kept me extremely busy for a large chunk of time (and I went through four highlighter pens. Dude) but I finished the initial - and hopefully most difficult - revision and returned it to my editor. She's going to collaborate on marking up the new version of the manuscript with my U.S. editor, because Walker and Candlewick have been working closely together on this project in the hopes of reducing the wait between the book coming out in the UK and being published in the U.S. I probably won't hear anything back about the improved version of The Night Itself until late August.

I imagine there'll be another run through of the book then in order to smooth it and polish it and make it as good as possible. I'm really crossing my fingers that I'm not asked to make any more major changes, re-think any characters or add any more new scenes at this point. Not because I don't want to do the work on TNI, but because I'm obviously trying to work on the second Katana Book (which does have a title, promise - I'll probably share it when I have a cover design for The Night Itself to show you). Before I was asked to revise the first book I was about 65,000 words into the second one, which I expected to be about 73-80,000 words long in total.

With all the changes that I made to the first book, the second one now not only needs to be finished, but also completely overhauled itself (above and beyond the normal revision process) because in many key areas it no longer matches the first book, and THAT means large chunks of action and plot and characterisation no longer make the slightest bit of sense.

The problem is that because I'm not entirely sure if the new version of the first book that I've turned in will be the FINAL version (or if I'm likely to have to make more radical changes) I don't really know how to overhaul book #2 yet. And it's hard to imagine being able to push on and finish it without overhauling it, knowing that everything I'm writing is most probably fundamentally *wrong*.

I've got a fat manuscript of the incomplete second book printed out here, in a smart plastic document holder. It's been my constant companion for the past few weeks, but I've not yet been able to bring myself to open the holder and look at it because I literally have no idea what to do with or to it. Not to mention that printing it out breaks my Number One Cardinal Rule for myself when I'm writing, which is DO NOT LOOK BACK.

Looking at any part of an unfinished manuscript has been known to cause total paralysis in my writer's brain (accidentally reading a page from the beginning of the first draft of Shadows on the Moon caused writer's block that lasted for SIX MONTHS). In this case I know I have to re-read the manuscript before I go on. There's no way I can move forward with it otherwise. But that doesn't stop my whole brain from lighting up with red flashing signs saying DANGER! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

So... *Sighs* I've basically spent the last few weeks grinding my teeth and procrastinating to the utmost extent of my ability. Which is great. Finally acknowledging that I've also been ill for a bit (once again, kids: denial doesn't work like antibiotics!) and getting some pills has helped, because it's made the headaches, dizziness and constant nausea (which my mother insisted was caused by stress - thanks mum!) go away and now I feel slightly better. I think I'll most probably bite the bullet and try to start re-reading this weekend. Eeep.

In the meantime! Remember the Summer Scream Event in London on the 4th of August, at Foyles Bookshop at Charing Cross? Where I will be part of a panel event also staring mega-stars L.A. Weatherly, Karen Mahoney and Michelle Harrison? Well, now some new authors will also be coming along to take part in a second panel event - Ruth Warburton and Laura Powell. And this is happening - Good Lord - SATURDAY NEXT WEEK! Where did the time go? I'm getting more and more excited the closer it gets. I'll probably do a post about it on Thursday next week, just to give a bit more detail for anyone who is coming - and I promise to take pictures and write up a detailed event report on the Tuesday after I come back so that even if you couldn't attend you'll get a flavour of the whole thing.

My publisher has been kind enough to get me a later train back from London on the Sunday and I'm hoping to use that time to do some Katana Trilogy research, specifically for locations I'm planning to use in the final book, which is brilliant and I'm really looking forward to it. It will, of course, be even more brilliant if I've managed to un-chicken myself and re-read Katana #2 by then. Wish me luck with that...

How are things with all of you, Dear Readers? Unload in the comments!

RETROFRIDAY: WRITING ROADBLOCKS

Happy Friday, Dear Readers! We made it to the end of the week - which probably seemed impossible somewhere around the middle of the week - so let's all have a pat on the back. Now the time has come for me to delve deep into the cool, secret shadows of the blog archive, emerge with a dusty old post, give it a quick polish with a damp cloth, then pop it onto the dinner table so that new readers can experience its delicious vintage, and long-time readers can sip of its rich sweetness once more. That's right! It's RetroFriday!

The topic of writing roadblocks was inspired by regular commenter Megha, who asked me a couple of separate questions in various comments, which I've smushed together to make this:

"Do you ever feel that your plot is too... big? Too much? I'm scared of starting my novel. It has been planned and plotted properly, and now I'm too scared to start. It's not writers' block, I know. And I know that all the writers go through this. My planning's done. There's nothing LEFT to plan about. I need to start, but I can't."

This is a writing roadblock.

Megha is right - this does happen to most writers at some time or other, for various reasons. In my case I'm usually scared the story is too SMALL, rather than too big. I worry that not enough happens, that I haven't made the right choices to stretch my characters, that I'll just run out of stuff to write after 30,000 words. I worry that it's all flawed because I've missed some huge, vital conflict that would have made everything worthwhile. Hence this Post-It stuck in the first page of my FF notebook:

But being scared that the story is too big, that it's too ambitious, that you won't do it justice, that it'll be too long...those are crippling fears too (I know, 'cos that's The Scary Place I've posted about here, and which I usually enter at around the 50% mark of my manuscript).

These roadblocks are hard to break through specifically because they don't come from the logical part of your brain. They're not based on anything you can put your finger on. They just appear out of nowhere, causing a nebulous sense of dread that makes us feel we'd do anything, even scrub the bathroom clean with a toothbrush, to avoid actually writing.

This isn't about writer's block in the sense that I think writer's block normally has one of several concrete causes (which you can read about here). This is basically about your own fears, your conscious and unconscious worries about writing, getting all snarled up and taking all the fun out of everything. And there's only one cure. One way to kick that writing roadblock to the curb.

If you've read many of my writing posts before, you probably know what I'm going to say next.

The one way to destroy a writing roadblock is to write.

It will NOT go away on its own. You won't wake up one day and find it's miraculously evaporated. You may wake up on many mornings thinking 'This is the day! Today I will write!' and then find yourself making excuses, procrastinating and pottering until it's midnight and you need to get to bed, but that's obviously not very useful. You will never be able to escape the sense of horrible foreboding until you punch through it and actually write. And the longer you leave it? The harder it gets.

I know it's horrible! Believe me, I know! But taking charge is the only way.

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

• Put the plans/notes/story outlines/folders of maps you've made for this story away.   

At this point you're using these as an excuse to avoid writing. They've become part of the problem. Put them at the bottom of the draw. You are forbidden to look until you actually NEED to check a fact or remind yourself of something. 

• Leave your normal writing place. 

If you've been sat in the same room in the same chair, or lying on your bed, or sat at your desk, every day, stewing over his for hours at a time, your brain has now incorporated the location into your sense of dread. Go somewhere else. Somewhere you would never normally associate with writing. A new coffee shop. A corner in the library. A friend's house, if they can be trusted to leave you alone. I find trains very good for this, personally. Anyway, chose a place and go there. 

• Set yourself a time and stick to it. 

Tell yourself that you will start writing at precisely whatever-o'clock and that you will write for a certain, set amount of time. Make it manageable. It's no good saying you'll get up at 6:00am and write for three hours. You'll fail and feel even worse. Give yourself a reasonable start time, and a reasonable writing period. Half an hour is a good stretch to start. 

• Remind yourself that you're just scribbling. 

You're just writing to fill up the blank page at this point. It doesn't have to be great. It doesn't even have to be good. I find it useful to use a pencil and paper when doing this, because it looks messy and smudgy and reminds you that it's just scribbling, not actual writing. But if you normally write with pen and paper, maybe you'd want to switch to a laptop, so long as you're okay taking it with you to wherever you've chosen to write.



That's all. 

As soon as you've started writing again, as soon as you've defied the dread and the worry and the stressing-out and put pen to paper for fun again, you remember why you actually wanted to do this writing lark to start with.

Don't go too fast - don't put pressure on yourself when you start to feel better. But don't let yourself off the hook either. Keep doing your half-hour scribbling sessions until you get to the point where you're starting to over-run, to not want to stop. Then stretch yourself with forty minutes. Maybe think, 'Today, I'm going to use my forty minutes to play around with opening lines. Opening paragraphs for the first chapter. Hmmm...'

Then one day you'll find you've written for two hours straight and that you've got a first chapter staring at you.

Writing roadblock? Dust.

Right - time for me to get back to my precious. Hope this was helpful everyone - and have a great weekend!

RETROFRIDAY - TO CRY OR NOT TO CRY?

Hello, Dear Readers - and a happy, happy Friday!

A couple of days of solid work on revising Big Secret Project Book One have put me in a much better mood than the one you saw on Wednesday (sorry about that - hope no one was traumatised), as have other factors which I'm not really allowed to talk to you about (but never fear, I'll share as soon as I'm given the OK). So don't worry. That beastie with the fangs and the manic eyes is well-and-truly back in the box
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For today's RetroFriday I have once again trawled through the perilous archives of the Zoë-Trope to find an article that some of you may not have seen before, or may enjoy reading again. I give you:

TO CRY OR NOT TO CRY?

Today, I have been crying. Not wailing, sobbing, or beating my breast, mind you. A few dignified, crystaline tears slipping down the cheeks, the odd sniff. That sort of thing. But fear not. Nothing bad has happened to your favourite author (second favourite? Third? Fine, an author you might have heard of once, maybe). I've just been re-writing some emotional scenes in FF.

I quite often get a little het up when I'm writing. I don't set out to do it. I'll just be reading some dialogue out loud to myself and suddenly there's a catch in my throat. Or maybe there's no dialogue, and I'm working hard to capture a certain, intense moment in a character's life, and suddenly PLOP, there's a tear there on the page. There have definitely been times when I've finished my day's work with swollen nose and eyes, and headed straight for the chocolate stash. Shadows on the Moon was probably my weepiest work - but TSK and DotF had their moments too. FF is coming out somewhere near Shadows, but I haven't finished revising yet. It may get worse (O Joy).

Since I've always been this way it never occurred to me to question it, and I probably assumed that most other authors were the same way (whether they admitted it or not) up until recently. I remember reading a quote once that said 'No tears in the author, no tears in the reader' and thinking: Well, I've got that covered anyway.

But it turns out there are some authors who scorn this kind of rampant emotionalism, and who say that it's all just silliness and getting carried away. Do carpenters weep over their dovetail joints, these writers ask? Does an engineer get emotional when applying his wrench? No! Writing, they say, is a craft, like any other, and in order to use the tools of craft correctly one must maintain a proper emotional distance and realise that IT'S ALL JUST FICTION ANYWAY FOR CRISSAKES!!!

And hey, before we start badmouthing these guys - we're talking Maggie Stiefvater, Meg Cabot and Veronica Roth here. People whose success and opinions need to be respected. I do respect them.

I'm not just not sure I really agree.

Of course I can see, logically, where writers who say things like this are coming from. Anyone who feels the way they do is absolutely right - when it comes to their own work. But it seems a little prescriptive to be implying that people who do get very emotionally involved with their characters are just being silly. Writers, like all people, are famously individual. One writer's block is another writer's inspiration.

Yes, writing is a craft. A craft like carpentry or engineering. It has its own tools and it can be learned and improved with practise. But it's also an art (I'm not being pretentious here, because I think anything, really anything, can be an art if you love it and do your absolute best with it and believe in it). And contrary to common belief, the stuff of a writer's art is not words. Words are the medium. Just like a glassblower uses glass as a medium in which to capture light, so a writer uses words as a medium to capture emotion.

That's what being a writer is all about, right? Whether we want to make people laugh, or get angry, or feel sad, or happy, the important thing is that they feel. We create characters and stories and worlds with the specific intention of influencing a reader's emotions, of changing their feelings in this minute with our story. A writer of fiction wants to engage the reader's heart - and sometimes, some of us need to invest our own to get that. If I can't believe in a character enough to forget, now and then, that they're not real, then I don't think my readers will ever feel my characters are real at all.

On the other hand, fairly recently a very successful author Who Shall Not Be Named (*cough*LaurellKHamilton*cough*) annoyed and amused a lot of authors, including me, by putting out a blog post where she claimed that writing her novels was so emotionally painful for her that it resembled being dismembered, and that she was bleeding on her keyboard. Which. You know. Euw. And her major point seemed to be that anyone who doesn't feel this way is a BIG FAT SELLOUT FAKE and NOT A REAL WRITER.

Eeep. Pretty sure I don't agree there either. Any activity which caused such intense pain that I felt like I was bleeding all over the place would not be for me. Isn't writing supposed to be fun? Yes, it's hard work. Yes, it's emotionally draining at times. Yes, it can also be frustrating and (let's not forget) BADLY PAID. But if you hate it so much that it hurts you, for Sweet Baby Jesus's sake stop it. Whether you're doing yoga, competitive tap-dancing or ecologically-friendly beaver wresting, there is a difference between 'good pain' (muscles working, sweat rising, feel the burn) and bad pain (oh my god with the ouchy and the stinging and the make it stttooooppp). We writers might like to pretend that we're all eccentric oddballs for laughs, but this level of angst is bordering on some kind of personality disorder.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is: there are a lot of people in the world who will be telling you This Is How To Be A Writer. Some of them will say things that seem dead on. Others will apparently be talking some strange crazy language that sounds like a penguin gacking up its breakfast. Take what you find useful and move on, and, ultimately, do what works for you and makes you want to write more.

Because no one likes Mr Judgy-Writer-Pants.

THE LOVE THAT KILLS

Hello Dear Readers, and welcome to another delightful Wednesday on the Zoë-Trope!

Today I'm going to talk about love. And not just any love. The deadly kind.

I am not referencing here the sort of feelings that a slender brunette who has never quite fitted in instantly and inexplicably develops for the marble cupcake Adonis who wants to follow her around and watch her sleep and also rip out her throat and chug down her florally scented tastyblood. No.

I'm talking about this: R.J. Anderson's comment about beloved scenes on Twitter.

R.J.'s Tweet yesterday got me thinking about this kind of love. The love that a writer has for her work.

Well, obviously not all of her work, since about 50-90% of the time that you're working on a first draft you're likely to be under the impression that you are trying to chip the words out of solid granite by hand, with only a blunt spoon for assistance.

But there are...certain scenes, aren't there? Scenes that are just a little bit special to you. Often these are the scenes that presented themselves to you right at the beginning of your thinking process about the story, and which made you go: 'No way! That would be SO. AWESOME. And COOL! It would be Awesome with a side of Cool Sauce!' and thereby motivated you through coming up with an actual plot and setting and characters.

In fact, scenes like this are what motivate us through all those bits with the granite block and the blunt spoon. We tend to think about them wistfully, imagining all the ways that the AwesomeCoolSauceness could play out. What if the whole place just exploded? What if the hero literally bounced right off the wall? What if there were, like, shooting stars omg?

These beloved scenes become a kind of comfort blanket for the frazzled writer, I think. Sure, sure, this scene that we're writing now sucks with the force of a thousand black holes. Sure, sure, that last chapter was about as convincing as a politician promising 'change' (ha ha). But AwesomeCoolSauce Scene will be different. It will go exactly to plan. It will blaze off the page with all the beauty and intensity of the very first time you snuggled a kitten. Dammit, AwesomeCoolSauce Scene WILL BE PERFECT (Writer Hulk Smash!).

Except...yeah. No it won't.

I have a very good friend who is working on a book at the moment. She's completed several stories before and has always been interested in the craft of writing, but this manuscript is different. It has caught her imagination and her love in a unique way, and for the first time she's seriously talking about seeking publication. I'm very happy about this, because, having talked to her in great depth about the story and its characters, I'm convinced that the book is going to rock the world's socks. However...

My friend is having trouble with her climax.

Right since the beginning of her ideas process with this book, she's had a plan for how the story and characters were going to resolve themselves. She wasn't perfectly sure how she was going to get there but she did know, with crystal clarity, just how it was all going to end. And for a long time that that knowledge motivated and inspired her. But now it's become like a brick around her neck. Every time I talk to her she's this close to launching into the climactic scenes, and then the next time we speak she's all downhearted because somehow she wrote and wrote but just didn't get there.

Her writerly brain has now invested this scene with so much importance, so much significance, that any attempt she makes to actually write the thing just seems wrong and terrible and off. So subconsciously, her brain is forcing her to swim against the tide, words stretching out in front of her as she frantically paddles but never gets anywhere.

You might think that I would have some sort of handy-dandy advice to offer my friend, to quickly and simply extract her from this fix. But unfortunately I am by no means standing on any kind of creative high ground when it comes to this issue. I was in a very similar position when I was writing FrostFire. The whole book had always been working towards a certain outcome, and this outcome had never altered despite me rearranging the entire plot and giving all the characters a sex change multiple times.

As a result, the climax to my story had grown in my head until it was - had to be - the most heart-rending, beautiful, perfect climax to a book that I hadeverwrittengodammit. I got stuck in the preceding scene for over a month, completely unable to move forward. How do you start the most beautiful, perfect climax to a book that you haveeverwrittengodammit? HOW? What is the most beautiful and perfect first line? First word? I was paralysed by the weight of responsibility - paralysed by my desperation to not mess up this beautiful and perfect scene.

Eventually, some very strange tactics got me through the block. Like, taking a cold shower in the middle of the day and writing in my towel with wet hair and eating about four bars of chocolate as I typed until I felt sick, kind of tactics. Frankly, I don't recommend them.

Here's the nub of the matter. The thing that paralyses us because we cannot bring ourselves to admit it. The truth about AwesomeCoolSauce Scene. No matter how much we agonise over it and visualise it and long for it, we will never actually write it.

That's right. AwesomeCoolSauce Scene is never actually going to exist anywhere but in your brain. The moment you start taking those awe-inspiring, beautiful and perfect ideas and start pinning them to the page with words, some of their awe-inspiringness and beauty and perfection will, by definition, evaporate.

I'm willing to lay my life that no writer in the history of the world - not Shakespeare, not Dickens, not Yeats, not Austen or Bronte or Jones - has ever managed to write their AwesomeCoolSauce Scene. I'm willing to lay my life that they never even managed to write that beautiful and perfect first line, or even a beautiful and perfect first word.

But does that mean that we, as readers, don't look at their words and feel completely transformed by the beauty and perfection of their words and lines and scenes? Does that mean that we cannot and will not yell: 'Holy Cr*p, this scene is So. Awesome! It's so cool! It's AWESOME WITH A SIDE OF COOL SAUCE!'

HELL NO.

And by torturing ourselves into a small, gooey puddle with the idea of our impossible perfect scene, we are depriving our potential readers of the chance to read THEIR perfect scene.

So what to do?

Well, here's what I've learned (and if other writers reading this have solutions of their own, please feel free to chime in there in the comments): 

1) You can distract yourself from the responsibility of writing AwesomeCoolSauce Scene by making yourself hideously uncomfortable as you write. But, like I said, not really endorsing that one so much.

2) You can try to fool yourself by saying 'I'm not actually writing AwesomeCoolSauce Scene here. I'm just practising. Scribbling. Making notes. That DOES NOT COUNT!'

3) You can go the other way and outline the Hell out of this scene, using coloured pens, bullet points and a graph so you know exactly what to do, right down to where the characters have to stop to breathe. This gives you a sense of confidence going in, even if you diverge from the outline as you write.

4) This one is a complete last resort for me, because I am hopelessly linear in my process. But of course, if you feel AwesomeCoolSauce Scene hanging over you like a threat the closer you get to it, you can always skip ahead and just write that sucker so it's not freaking you out anymore.

5) Try coming at the scene from a different perpective, like writing the first part from a different character's POV, even if you've no intention of using it in the final version. It might help you to avoid the intensity of knowing it. Must. All. Be. Perfect.

In closing - loving the idea of a certain scene and using this to motivate yourself = good. Loving the idea of a certain scene so much that it literally kills your story (or you, from pneumonia) = very bad. Stay safe, kids!

A LETTER TO MY CHARACTERS

Dear Characters,

Exactly what are you trying to tell me?

Speak up! I can't stand all this muttering you young people do these days - in my day people spoke their minds so everyone could understand them. I can tell that there's something going on. I can hear you whispering behind my back and I'm bright enough to notice that you always fall silent when I walk in. Just what is the problem?

I mean, here we are, 70% through this wonderful story which - I fully admit! - you've helped me with in the most generous way. The plot has developed in all kinds of interesting and unexpected directions thanks to your input, and so many exciting things are going on right now. We've been looking forward to this section of the book since we first started writing it together, and I thought we'd be skipping through fields of daisies, hand-in-hand, at this point.

But suddenly you've changed.

You're dragging your feet. You keep sighing and looking over your shoulder and finding excuses to stay just where you are in this flaming scene where we've been stuck for a week. Instead of witty banter you're giving me grammatically correct dialogue with all the spark and humour of oatmeal.

I just can't tell what you're THINKING anymore.

Obviously there's something you want to share. So come on - out with it! I'm happy to listen to any concerns you've got. You want to add something? Take a few steps back and handle that last bit of action in a different way? Make time for smooching or a blazing row? Whatever you want, I'll do it!

We've been such good friends for so long. I can't cope with this silent treatment. Talk to me again, that's all I want. I know that our relationship is strong enough to survive, so long as we keep communicating.

Just stop ignoring me. Please.

Much love,
Your Worried Author

READER QUESTION

Hello, Dear Readers! Happy Monday - I hope you're all getting a chance to see a bit of the sun, even if you are heading out to work or school today.

I know that I said I would do a reader question post this Wednesday but why put off until tomorrow that which can be done today? Plus, I have another plan for Wednesday. So without further ado, let's hear from long-time blog commenter Isabel, who says:

"I keep thinking that the plot of my story from this point onwards isn't going to work or isn't broad enough for a novel. I've also been having difficulty getting my ideas down. I had this vivid image for what I wanted to write in this chapter and it's not exactly turning out the way I planned for it to. I'm afraid that I might work myself into a dead end with my story and not be able to continue with it, even though I adore my book and don't want to quit. I'm also afraid that Alex and Megha -- the two people that read and comment on my work -- won't like it anymore. How do I decide whether a certain plot-line is going to work out, and is there any way for me to stop being so critical about my work? How do you go about constructing your story-lines? What are the main pointers that you think about while brainstorming for story/plot ideas? And how do you get yourself un-stuck when you run out of ideas?"

Which is a LOT of questions. Phew! And, what's more, a lot of questions which I've actually already answered on this blog - for example in How I Plot, Turning Ideas into Plots Parts One, Two and Three, Writing Roadblocks, Take a Deep Breath, and Plotting a Trilogy. I have a feeling that you've already read most if not all of these, Isabel, but that in your slightly frenzied state you've just forgotten.

Because that's what I'm getting from this email. I'm getting that you feel under a lot of pressure, that you're worrying a lot about your work and what people might think of it, and that you don't feel in control. I don't think you're really looking for specific advice on those points you've mentioned (especially since it's all already there for you in the links above) as much as a bit of reassurance. 

I would say that I spend about 70% of the time when I'm drafting feeling exactly the way that you are feeling here (it goes up to 90% when I'm revising). Frenzied, slightly panicked, worried, out of control. I used to think if I could just come up with that magic plotting diagram or that perfect piece of writing process, the panic and worry would go away and I'd be confident and calm and would know just what I was doing. But I've come to a gradual realisation working on FF and BSP - and that's this:

It's normal to panic.

You never figure out how to write a book. NEVER. You only figure out, usually when you've nearly finished it, how to write the book you're working on NOW. Every time we start a new story we're striking out into unexplored territory, meeting new characters, taking on new challenges. New, new, new. So of course you'll feel out of control and confused. You're figuring it out as you go along, and that's what being a writer is about (unless you're one of those guys who just recycles the same characters and stories and settings over and over again, in which case your main problem is probably boredom).

So I'd like you to re-read Take A Deep Breath and then do just that. Stop putting this pressure on yourself to be perfect. Even though I know you love to create beautiful language and fiddle and get things right first time, that doesn't mean you have to get everything PERFECT first time. You ARE going to revise and re-write, and when you do you will improve everything at least five or ten times anyway. Don't expect yourself to have all the answers. Don't freak out if you don't have any answers. You are not on a deadline, and Alex and Megha will not be offended if you ask them to take a break for a little while and just keep your work to yourself until you're feeling more centred.

The last thing you want to do is take all the fun out of it for yourself, Isabel. Because, as I'm always saying, if you take all the fun out of writing, you might as well go and become an accountant instead. Relax. Breathe. It will work itself out in the end.

Now, by popular request (well, OK, one request - but it counts!) I bring you the three videos that I made over the weekend on the topic of why people keep bashing YA writing and writers. Warning: ADULT LANGUAGE!








That's all I have time for today, my lovelies - but don't worry, I will keep ploughing through the pile of reader questions, and you will get another post next week. Now I'm heading out into the wide blue yonder for a ramble with Finn. See you all on Wednesday!
 

TAKE A DEEP BREATH...

Okay, so this post was inspired by Megha, a regular commentor who left a comment on Monday's trail which betrayed that she was feeling just a liiitle stressed. Why? Because she did not feel inspired. And not in the 'Oh, I have to wait for my Muse to pop in the window with scones and tea before I can write' way (in which case, we would be applying a butt-kicking) but in a freaked-out 'I have no ideas and I don't feel creative what's wrong with me arrrgh!' kinda way.

This provokes our deep sympathy, my beloveds. For writers, who usually have story ideas hitting them all day and every day until they can hardly keep up with them, to find yourself suddenly drying up and realising that you don't have anything to write about - and even worse, that you have no idea what you WANT to write about - is...well, frankly it is terrifying.

I've been there, guys. Back when I first decided I wanted to write YA fantasy I got so excited that I went through (and discarded) about six million ideas that I wanted to write - and suddenly THERE WERE NO MORE. It's like looking straight into a black, bottomless abyss and realising there's nothing there at all. Nothing to catch you, nothing to catch onto. You call down into it and there isn't even an echo. It's just empty. If you have nothing to write about, no ideas, no spark of inspiration...are you even a writer anymore? Cue self of sense collapsing, tearing out of hair and curling up into a tiny, whimpering ball.

This happens to all creative people in all fields sooner or later, I reckon. I think it's a product, sometimes, of trying too hard. It becomes so important to have a project on the go all the time that we rip through dozens of ideas, moving too quickly, discarding them because none of them were really ready and they feel immature and thin. Your brain suddenly gets sick of it and applies the brake. The subconscious Little Voice (which I talked about here) shuts up. And it turns out that it's pretty lonely in your head all alone without it.

The first thing to remember when this happens is - DON'T PANIC. No, okay, that's impossible. You're going to panic. But don't let the panic take over because I promise, take my oath, pinkie-swear, that this is not forever. The ideas are going to come back. You can't stop them coming back even if you want to. Your brain can only shut them out for so long. So what you need to do now is...

Take a deep breath.

Count to eight.

Now let it out.

And another.

Count to eight again. Breathe out.

One more. Deeeeep breath.

Count to eight. Let it out.

Right. Now that we're feeling a bit calmer, we need to take a bit of a leap.

Forget about ideas. Forget about books. Forget about writing stories. I know - Le Gasp, right? But I'm serious. Take a step back from being a writer for a little while, and you will be taking a step back from the crazy. I know it's easy to define yourself completely by your identity as a writer, but you're a person too, and you aren't going to die if you give your writing hand a rest for a bit.

Now, give yourself permission to do something else. Read a new book, or re-read an old favourite that you've been meaning to get to for a while. Sketch or paint. Take a few slow, wandering walks. Go shopping. Visit a museum or go on a trip with family or friends. Watch a great film or an awful, cheesy one that makes you snort with laughter. Listen to your favourite music - and spend an afternoon on YouTube or iTunes listening to new songs and finding new favourites. Do any or all of the things that you somehow never quite find the time to do normally because you're wanting to write. Do your homework, kids (education is a priceless thing)!

If you get any little flickers of ideas while you're watching that cheesy movie or looking at the wind moving through the trees, or hanging out with your friends? Very calmly pull out your notebook and make a note and leave it. Don't pounce on the idea and kill it before it's ready. On the other hand, if you feel a sudden, burning urge to write a song or a poem - go nuts! Spend all day doing that if you want, and have fun. I used to write about three poems a day when I was a teen, and I loved it (and I was pretty good at it too).

I guarantee that under this gentle, non-pressurised treatment in which you shower your brain with lots of new/rich images, and fun, and emotional stimuli and not freaking-the-heck-out, your imagination will bloom once again. That doesn't mean that the moment it does you should go back to what you were doing before, mind you. This is a warning from your brain. Chill. Stop focusing so much on results and enjoy the journey a little more. Let your ideas mature. Play around with new styles. I know I've talked about Neverending Stories, but it honestly doesn't matter if you mess with sixteen different stories at once and five of them are paranormal romance and six are high fantasy and two are contemporary and one is a murder mystery and the other four are dystopian - so long as you're having fun.

Eventually, an idea will come along that you love and adore and want to kiss and hug and make out with. Well, all right, maybe that's just me - but what I'm trying to say is that eventually The One True Idea will come along, and you'll know because you'll stop messing around and find yourself wanting to work only on that one story. Just like True Love, really. But this can't happen if you're stressing out, worrying, and making yourself miserable.

Writing is supposed to be fun, guys. Yes, it's hard work at times, and requires patience, perseverence, craftsmanship and dedication. But if it's not FUN, at the end of the day, you might as well go and become an accountant. Right?

I leave you with three things which I personally find very inspiring, in different ways.

Spooky Mysterious Castle by the Sea

Go forth, my lovelies...and breathe.

RETROFRIDAY - NEVER ENDING STORIES

Hello all - and happy Friday! Today I bring you another oldie post dredged up from the perilous depths of the ZT archive, which I hope you'll find useful whether you're re-reading it, or seeing it for the first time. Without more ado:

NEVER ENDING STORIES

I had an email the other day from a young (extremely young) lady called Regan the other day. She's a very enthusiastic writer and reeled off a list of about six or seven story titles that she's working on, some of which were up to seventy-five pages long. She was mainly writing to me for advice on how to handle it when her family, teachers etc. dismiss her writing, so referred her to my TOP TIPS post and my website, where I talk about that a lot.

However, she made a throwaway comment which caused my Writer Senses (like spider senses, but with less webbing) to tingle. She said that before she could finish any of her stories she always ended up getting an idea for another one. Her stories weren't getting finished.

This is an issue which is close to my heart - and probably to the hearts of many reading this blog. For a lot of young and not-so-young writers, the problem of actually managing to complete a story/novel crops up again and again. If you want to learn more, read on. I warn you - this post is long. Very long. It may have developed its own gravitational field by now...

The thing is, it doesn't sound difficult to finish a story. In fact, you'd think it would be the most natural and easy thing in the world. You start it, then you do some noodley bits in the middle, then you write The End and you've finished. Yeah?

Nooooo.

For many years, whenever I told family and friends that I was starting a new novel their response would be a long-suffering sigh and mutters of 'If only you could FINISH one...' At first this didn't bother me much. Because, of course, the story that I'd just abandoned at three chapters was lame and pointless, but this new story, well, this was the perfect story, it was awesome and of course I was going to finish it, right? Oh, Young Zolah, how very wrong you were. Because three chapters into that awesome new story, somehow all the new and awesome had always drained out of it, and there would be MUCH better idea lurking in the back of your mind waiting to pounce.

I loved writing. I always have. I'm a writing geek. I play with words constantly, steal parts of overheard conversations, note down news headlines, and have new stories, characters and worlds constantly crowding into my head. Which is supposed to be a good thing, isn't it? Having so much love for writing should have made it easy for me to finish lots and lots of stories. But it didn't. By the time I'd hit my teens I'd gotten to the point where I couldn't even finish a three page story for an English class. That was okay at school, because I usually ended up writing twelve pages instead of three, and the teacher would be so impressed they'd overlook the lack of ending. I wasn't overlooking it, though. I'd started to get this creeping, icy sense of anxiety. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe I couldn't finish stories.

Maybe I never would.

When I was sixteen I decided I wanted to write category romance (Mills and Boon for those of you in the UK, something like Harlequin Romance for those in the US). I was reading these non-stop at the time, mostly because they sold ten for a quid in the local charity shops, and were available by the thousand in the library. They were so plentiful that I could read about ten in a weekend and still have twenty left to keep me going throughout the week. No other genre in the publishing industry could keep up with me. I did some research. I found out that the ladies who wrote these books could make a really good living from it. I did some more research and wrote to the publisher for a set of their guidelines. This set out exactly how many words each book could have and what sort of storylines you could use. It was almost like an essay assignment at school. Armed with all my facts and figures, I set out to write one of these books.

AND I DID IT.

Somehow, the fact that I had been given a word target and a fairly narrow list of requirements, combined with my in-depth knowledge of the genre, made it possible for me, in between school and homework and TV and the rest, to bash out a 50,000 word romance novel in about four months.

You can probably imagine my triumph. I'd beaten the jinx. I'd proven I could really be a proper writer. I don't think my feet even touched the ground for about a week after typing The End.

On a roll (so I thought) I submitted the novel to Mills and Boon. And the inevitable happened. I was summarily rejected. Looking back, I can only thank the God of Writers for his unexpected kindness there, because that book STANK. At the time, though, it was a huge blow.

I carried on trying to get published with category romances for a couple more years, but my old problem had returned. I couldn't finish them. Instead I would write three chapters and a synopsis, send it to the romance publishing company, get rejected and move onto a new story.

Then when I was eighteen, through various coincidences, I found the genre which was to become my perfect home. YA Fantasy. Just like always, I began to read voraciously in my chosen field, digging out old favourites and discovering new ones, until I had, once again, become an expert in my genre. Once again, I did my research, found out what sort of word target I needed to aim at. Once again, I checked out submission guidelines on publisher's websites. Then the idea for Blood Magic came to me.

By this time I was working full-time in an office, but that didn't stop me *living* inside that story for months. I remember putting customers on hold for a minute so I could scribble ideas on odd bits of paper. I remember leaning on the concrete wall of the tea-room, jotting down dialogue while colleagues stared. And I can remember thinking: I WILL COMPLETE THIS BOOK. I loved it - the story, the characters, the fictional world - so much that I just had to. I had to find out how it finished!

I drew up a little chart of how many words I should write a day, and gave myself a target, about nine months away, for completion. Unlike with previous stories I didn't go back and revise previous chapters, because I was always too busy writing the next one, and as a result I smashed my target, completing the book six months early, because I just couldn't stop writing.

Although Blood Magic was never destined to be published, writing it was the best thing I ever did for my YA writing career. When I submitted it to (and was rejected by) Walker Books, I came into contact with the gentleman who was later to become my first editor. After the book was rejected he called me up to tell me how much he liked my 'voice' and to ask me to send him anything else I wrote. A year almost to the day after submitting Blood Magic, I sent him The Swan Kingdom. Within a couple of months I had a publishing contract - and an agent too.

So, what is the point of this rambling story? Well, let's have a look at the facts here. Just like many of you, I couldn't finish stories. Except that I COULD - with the right conditions. I proved that with my romance novel and later with Blood Magic (and the books that came after). So, what are the right conditions? How do you go about writing a story in such a way that you will be able to finish it? 

RESEARCH: Read widely in your chosen field! Glory in it! Devour everything you can get your hands on. Read books you love and books you hate. Re-read both kinds and learn from them. In short, become an expert. Because that way you will be filled with a sense of confidence that you know exactly where your book fits in - that your ideas are original and interesting, and worthy of their own book - and this confidence will propel you forward to complete it.
 
TARGETS: Decide how long you want your book to be (look at other books in your genre and look at publisher's guidelines if you can find them). Decide what date you want to complete it by and how many words you should write a day or a week. Be reasonable, but do stretch yourself. Remember, even if you only write 500 words a day - two typed pages - that would be 182500 words by the end of the year! Enough for two or three books! Then do everything you can to stick to those targets. You won't always be able to manage it. The original word target for Shadows on the Moon was 65,000 words and the original completion target was April 2009. Instead, the first draft was 130,000 words long and I didn't complete until October 2009. But having targets will give you a sense that you're working on something that can and will be finished one day.
 
PASSION: Don't write the first idea that pops into your head. Don't be distracted by every fleeting, glamorous image in your brain and launch into writing without really thinking your story through. Don't read someone else's book, get 'inspired' and end up writing fanfic disguised as original fiction, telling yourself no one will notice. You need to be in LOVE with your story. Cherish it, think about it deeply, live inside the characters and love or hate them. Give all your imagination to one idea and let it grow and mature within you. Let it become something so special and unique, filled with so many of your own deepest values and feelings, that no one else on the planet could write it but you. Then when you come to put it down on paper, nothing will be able to tempt you away, even when things get hard, because nothing in the whole world will be as exciting to you as the story you're working on RIGHT NOW.

MOMENTUM: Just write. Keep your eye on the target and keep pushing forward. Don't give into the temptation to keep going back and revising those first pages or chapters. Maybe they suck, but so what? You can fix anything in revision - once you've finished the book. You can't fix it right now. In fact, it's pointless trying to revise an unfinished story, and you know why - because you get caught in the death spiral of doubting yourself and the story and never finish it. So just think about that glorious, heart-rending, funny, sad, change-your-life forever ending that you're going to create. Believe in that ending. Reach for it. And somehow, before you know it, you really will be writing it.