Writing places are important, and there is a reason for this. As animals, we like to fall into the groove of routine. It makes things easier on our brains. A habit puts us in mode and eliminates the need to waste energy on making decisions.
It may be a particular corner of the house, a Starbucks, or your closet. But if you write there frequently, you will notice that once you get there, you are more likely to be ready (or ready as you’ll ever be when it comes to writing).
I’ve felt creatively blocked, which is unusual for me. I think it’s because I’m in limbo. I’m still stuck in Florida due to airport closures that keep getting extended and I don’t know when I’ll really be able to go home.
This sense of waiting is branching off into my writing. Psychologically, everything is on pause. It’s like I am holding back until life flows freely again.
I know many writers feel the same right now. Many people are waiting to see when they can get back to work, go back to school, or just live life normally again. It’s like we’re holding our breath, words muted by masks, hands forbidden from reaching out to touch those we love.
Being absorbed with creating stories is usually a great way of coping with stressful situations, but in my case lately, it has not been. Of course, the pandemic is a crazy situation that is still sometimes hard to comprehend. I’ve thrown myself into work, which involves an industrious get-things-done energy, but when it comes fiction, a stubborn barrier stands between me and the unconscious creative source.
One of the reasons I think this could be is that I do not have my writing place. At home in Panama, the home office is for work only. When I write, I come out to the dining room with my dogs where there is a huge picture window that frames the mountains. In between sentences, I rest my eyes on the panorama as I wait for the whisper of the muses. They speak to me in the parade of clouds over the mountain peaks, the sway of the trees in the breeze, the songs of the birds flitting about. All is wild and boundless.
But since February, I’ve been staying with my family. I live and work in a pleasant little guest room. But I spend 90% of my day in the same spot. I sleep here, work here, practice yoga here, watch Amazon Prime here, video chat with my husband here, and I tried to write here. But nothing happened. I think this confinement is why I’ve had such trouble connecting with new ideas.
But I have finally broken the curse. We’ve begun Zoom write-ins twice a week in the Writers’ Mastermind. These Zoom meetings are where writers from all over the world get together online for an hour of undistracted writing time.
This write-in ritual has given me the routine my brain was looking for. I get some tea, close all fifty-seven of my browser tabs, open my document. I log onto Zoom and check in with everyone. Then we all go on mute and get to work. Afterward, we all stay for a quick chat and to trade resources and advice.
Getting past the writers’ block is an uphill slog, but working alongside fellow writers in this virtual space made me motivated and inspired to push through the resistance. These meetings have become my new “writing place.”
Designating a writing place is an effective way to get your head in the game, but sometimes we don’t have the choice of an ideal place. If we want to get any writing done, we have to squeeze it in on the train, or in the middle of the night, or on lunch break, or in a noisy household. I heard about a mother who sat on top of her refrigerator to work so she could supervise her children from above without being visible.
We have to be adaptable and write wherever we find ourselves or how we find ourselves mentally or physically. If we always wait until we feel like it, we will accomplish little. If something’s not working, we must explore new ways to create the best conditions for ourselves.
Happy Writing wherever you may be!
-—Christa
Where was the most unusual place you’ve written in?
Where is the best place for you to write?
Do write better on the move or in one spot? In a public place or private?
For writers, the word “author branding” might feel icky. We tend to think of major corporations trying to sell us stuff we don’t necessarily need. It feels like we are trying to confine ourselves to a neat little marketable package. But we don’t have to sell our souls. Branding for authors means …
… taking your you-ness and displaying it in the most authentic and consistent way possible.
So what author branding strategies can you use to communicate to readers who you are and what you write about?
Think of creating your author brand as decorating the storefront of your bookshop.
How will you display your masterpieces?
What do you want to be known for?
How will readers recognize you?
Whether you’re starting from scratch or auditing an existing author platform, think about the mood of your books. How do you want to make your readers feel?
Consider the colors, textures, elements, fonts, and themes on your site and socialmedia profiles.
For example, thriller authors might use bold colors and metallic or stone textures. Romance novelists might use soft colors and floral or lace textures. Scifi or fantasy might use jewel tones and cosmic or cloud textures.
Gather these elements and incorporate them into your website and social media artwork.
Have you actively designed your author branding?
Is your look, feel, and message consistent?
Could it use a makeover?
Join us in the Writers’ Mastermind for the Author Platform Mastery Workshop
where we will make it easier for readers to find you, fall in love with you, and buy your books.
1. Write because you love it. If you do it for that reason, no one can touch you because the reward is intrinsic to the act itself.
2. Write for yourself – not yourself the writer, but yourself the reader. Write to blow yourself away. Write like that because you are not special and therefore there will be plenty of other schmucks like you. To that end write what you love, not what you think other people want you to write.
3. Writing is a skill. Work to be better than your previous self. This current work is not an end in itself but part of the excellences of what you will produce tomorrow. To that end, mistakes are victories and moments of true learning that improve your work.
4. Be truthful in all things and to all people, including yourself.
5. When you publish, you are a business and your books are products: act accordingly.
6. Build a platform which you own – i.e. a mailing list first, everything else second. Funnel people from other platforms to your platform.
7. Never sign away 80-90% of your intellectual property because you are not prepared to learn how to sell books, or because you crave the recognition of gate keepers. The first is laziness; the second contradicts points 1 and 4 in the manifesto. There are conditions under which a traditional contract could be signed: access to print distribution networks at scale, but separate from digital and audio rights; or when financial compensation exceeds the demonstrable earning potential you could achieve by yourself; access to multimedia deals – games, tv and movies – likely to exceed self marketing potential. If these conditions are met, then such a contract can be considered.
8. Pay to play – social media is a blight whose only benefit is access to unfettered data which enables targeted paid for advertising. Don’t try to sell books for free on social media – there is little to no evidence that it scales. Cases that appear to are examples of content marketing whose financial costs are hidden in the time used to create the content. Full economic costing demonstrates pay to play is the only thing that scales reliably. To this point: no risk, no reward.
9. Invest in your skills and your business either in time or money.
10. Money is not the only measure of success, but it is a really good one that is empirically verifiable and correlates with selling books to more readers. To that end and to points 6 and 7 when you publish seek to make money. Hope is not a strategy for selling.
11. Do the work. No one cares about your work in progress. Why should they? It doesn’t yet exist. They will care once you’ve written it – if it’s any good – so shut up and write. It’s not hard manual work. It is a privilege. If done well, it matters. So do the work.
12. Do not procrastinate. Beware of procrastination that looks like work.
13. Create a bookshelf of work to be proud of and remember point 1.
14. Remember to replenish the well. Take a break … sometimes. When you do, do it properly.
15. Writing is a long game, play it as such. Play today and every day you can with that in mind. You my lose today, but you can’t win if you don’t play tomorrow. And remember, while it can be a serious game, it is still a game, so have fun and get playing.
Daniel Soule
Once Dan is a horror author who was an academic, but the sentences proved too long and the words too obscure. Northern Ireland is where he now lives. But he was born in England and raised in Byron’s hometown, which the bard hated but Dan does not. They named every other road after Byron. As yet no roads are named after Dan but several children are. Dan’s literary fiction has featured in Number Eleven, Storgy, and the Dime Show Review. His science fiction is available in Shoreline of Infinity and Phantaxis. And his horror can be found in Devolution Z, Sanitarium Magazine, Disturbed Digest and Into the Ruins.
Dan’s website is at dansoule.com where there is an exclusive ebook of short stories available, plus a classic horror novel.
We can’t hope to get better without constant learning. Just like I pointed out in my article about the self-taught writer, our teacher isn’t qualified.
I’ve heard this title going around for some time now, as if it’s begging for me to read it. I am not disappointed. The War of Art is just that, a war, and the war is against ourselves. I highly recommend it—not only for writers, but for anyone who is thinking about chasing a dream.
Will you be reading a book on improving your writing this month?
In this world of indie publishing, anyone and everyone is writing a book, but should they be?
I might be a jerk for bringing this up, but I’ll say it.
I see a lot of crappy books out there.
It makes me wonder—if all these writers think they’re good, and I am just as optimistic about my abilities, could I be mistaken too?
Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham is one of my favorite books about this creative dilemma. Fed up with a dreary accounting job, our protagonist, Phillip, goes to Paris to become a painter. He does well, but never creates anything extraordinary.
After the suicide of a classmate, who for all her artistic passion was a lousy painter, Phillip reevaluates his reasons for becoming an artist. He wonders what his future will look like if he continues to pursue his dream.
Phillip finally works up the nerve to end the subject once and for all by asking one of his painting masters to give an honest opinion of his work. The teacher is perplexed by his request.
Monsieur Foinet: “I don’t understand.”
Phillip: “I’m very poor. If I have no talent I would sooner do something else.”
Monsieur Foinet: “Don’t you know if you have talent?”
Phillip: “All my friends know they have talent, but I am aware some of them are mistaken.”
After Monsieur Foinet evaluates Phillip’s collection of work, he respectfully tells Phillip that he will never be anything other than a mediocre artist. Phillip decides to give up painting and go to medical school. Just like that — his abandons his whole Bohemian dream.
Unlike Phillip, I won’t give up writing no matter how paranoid I am about sucking. Although I would feel foolish pouring all of my energy into something I lack the talent for, whether anyone likes my writing should be secondary. Phillip’s friend and fellow painter, Clutton, puts it perfectly earlier in the book:
“What happens to our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could out of it while we were doing it.”
That doesn’t mean I don’t care if my writing is bad. Like Phillip, I‘m afraid I am not, and will never be, any good. But I have to remember that I am still learning and to be okay with that. You should be okay with that too.
You wouldn’t expect to shoot par on your first trip to a golf course. You will hack and slice and end up in bunkers covered in sand. You will be humiliated and discouraged and tested, so don’t expect to sit down and write a brilliant novel if you haven’t devoted yourself to learning everything you can.
Sure, writing, like painting, seems to involve a certain amount of innate talent. I read scores of writers who create beautiful, technically perfect prose but whose writing is devoid of passion. Then there are those who are great at inventing characters and plot lines but lack the ability to make it all mean something. I used to believe they were missing that “it” factor that makes a great writer.
But the “it” factor is not always a mysterious gift bestowed on few. It’s mostly doing what you need to do to get better, whether it be technical or intuitive. I believe that with the right tools, instruction, feedback, and hard work, anyone can become a good writer.
Are you frustrated? Unsure? Do you feel like something’s off but you don’t know what?
Then think about this…
How many years did you have to attend school to earn a diploma? How much training did you go through for your profession? Now, how many hours have you devoted not just to writing, but to actively learning how to become a better writer?
Imagine if you took your writing as seriously as your job.
What training do you need?
Where can you get qualified feedback?
Think about where you feel a lack of confidence.
Analyze the areas where you can improve.
Respect your creative compulsions. Invest in yourself. Make a plan and take action to learn all you can.
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Christa Wojciechowski is a dark fiction author and the founder of writecatalyst.com/, a virtual Mastermind Community where writers will learn how to become successful authors through live video chats, critique swaps, monthly masterclasses, and featured experts. Sign up for the wait list here.
