Becoming A Fiction Writer
One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination
October 14, 2010 by amanda

Book review: The Productive Writer, by Sage Cohen

You can probably imagine why I immediately snapped to attention when Sage Cohen mentioned on Facebook she was looking for some people to review her forthcoming book, The Productive Writer. I’m not exactly well-known for being productive. And hey, look up there – just to the left up there – my tag line says it all. “A whole lot of procrastination.” Doesn’t sit well with productivity, does it?

So, I had high expectations. This book could be the one to fix all my problems. (To be fair, I already knew in advance that it’s not just a book that I need – I also need to DO SOME WRITING. And stop MAKING EXCUSES. And so on. No book can actually nail my bottom to the chair and hold my hands above the keyboard.)

I’m happy to say that as much as a book could do it, this is the one that could actually help me be a more productive writer. Most of the content could apply to any situation, but the fact that it’s targeted squarely at writers makes it highly relevant and therefore useful. One of my favourite sections is titled “Procrastinate Productively” and includes this advice:

So you don’t feel like writing. Or you’re stuck on something and can’t go any further right now. Or you’re too tired or broke or can’t find your pink slipper. Okay. You are excused. I don’t do that stern schoolteacher, butt-in-chair guilt trip … I would like to propose an alternative … Waste time well. If you do things that need doing—that you’re actually in the mood to do—even procrastination can be productive. One of the things you’ll start to learn over time is your rhythm for settling down to make stuff happen and the times when you need to rearrange your bulletin board a few times and eat lots of cookies.

And I like that advice not just because it mentions cookies!

The Productive Writer has sections which are like the Getting Things Done of the literary world. Sage has advice on organising everything related to being a writer (I like how she says you should “housetrain your books” as soon as they arrive – so they don’t end up in random piles, for example next to the bed – yep, I’m guilty of that!). I know this will sound like I’ve taken none at all of our productivity advice on board, but when I have time (give me a break, I’ve still got a new-ish baby) I will read all this more thoroughly again and actually implement it. I promise.

Speaking of babies, The Productive Writer also addresses the issue of fitting writing in around other parts of your life in a chapter neatly titled “Writing in the Margins of a Full-Time Life”. I read something similar last week too and there’s a particularly salient point for me, and any other mothers or fathers reading this – basically, try to avoid too much multi-tasking and when you’re looking after your kids, look after your kids. When you’re writing, write. I’ve already heard myself say to my baby, who’s still too young to understand but was grizzling on his play mat wanting some attention, “just five minutes and Mummy will have finished this work she needs to do.” Consciously separating these activities, something I’ve been focusing on this week, certainly does make me do both of them better.

I could go on and on, because there was so much in this book that spoke to me, but I’d encourage you to go and read it yourself and find the bits that you need to know. I doubt that any writer out there is already so productive that they couldn’t learn something new. Due out in December, I believe, you can pre-order it at Amazon at the moment – look for Sage Cohen’s The Productive Writer: Tips & Tools to Help You Write More, Stress Less & Create Success.

P.S. As a kind of aside, just because I adore Margaret Atwood (do you follow her on Twitter? You should! – @MargaretAtwood), and because it made me laugh: this story is included in Sage’s book to remind us that writing is not always so easy.

It is rumored that at a party, author Margaret Atwood was speaking to a neurosurgeon who mentioned that he had just retired and was considering writing a book, to which she replied, “What a coincidence! I was thinking of becoming a neurosurgeon when I retire.”

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September 21, 2010 by amanda

My perfectly imperfect writing life: Not even “erfect” yet!

Regular readers will remember I recently decided it was okay to be erfect – or in other words, not quite perfect. Well, lately I’ve been doing even better than that in my fiction writing life, and I can only say that I’ve been “perfectly imperfect”. And that I stole that phrase from Kate’s Picklebums blog where she is currently blogging about being imperfect. Her excuse adds up to four children, including a newborn, whereas I only have one, so I think she’s doing a whole lot better than me.

So why I am imperfect at the moment? Well, the start of it all is that little screen shot up there. Yes, the one that says “tidy office” with an unusually large number of exclamation marks for someone who doesn’t like using them too much, at least not all in a row like that. It is a little difficult to write prolifically when one can’t find the keyboard in one’s office. I would have included a picture of said office but it’s altogether too embarrassing.

A combination of being overseas for a month, coming home and being sick, the little one being sick too, and an increase in “proper” paid work (as distinct from “maybe paid in the future” fiction work), has all led to my fiction writing coming to a complete standstill. My mind is willing but there are just no hours in the day that I’m able to use to even clear the space around my keyboard, let alone type at it (you may well wonder how I’m blogging, then, and the answer is that I’m on my husband’s laptop in another room, but its tiny keyboard is no good at all for prolonged fiction writing. And besides, I can hear the baby waking up as I type).

But I know that things will settle down, we will get healthy, and heck, one day the baby will go to school (why haven’t they made school compulsory for one-year-olds yet? Then I’d be half way there!). Then my fiction writing will be less imperfect. It might even head back towards being erfect.

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February 22, 2010 by amanda

Writers’ keyboard syndrome: Where’s the “e”?

Faded keyboard

My other half refuses to sit down at my computer any more because he can’t type using my keyboard. I guess, looking at this picture, I can understand why. I type so much, and probably a little too fast and too hard, with the tough fingernails I inherited from my mother, and the letters have worn off many of the keys. And this is the second keyboard I’ve been through in about a year.

I don’t usually notice because 95% of the time I touch type, but there are odd occasions where I find it difficult. If I’m trying to drink a cup of tea with one hand, for example, and need to type in a website address to read while I drink, then searching for a letter when not using both hands to type is quite tricky. I have to look away and then my fingers find their own way. I guess for someone who can’t touch type,
this keyboard would really be quite a challenge.

It’s not even old – maybe six or seven months. It’s wireless which I love, because I can move it around my desk to fit in with the piles of books or notepads that might otherwise get in the way, and I can easily hold it up high out of the way when my cats are playing around on my desk. It’s also super-ergonomic, which was weird at first but means my wrists don’t feel tired or sore at the end of the day. So I’m reluctant to change it back to the old non-wireless keyboard I still have sitting in my shelves, even if it does still have the letters on most of the keys. I guess if the punctuation marks start disappearing too, then I might have to give in. Until then, I’ll keep typing. Fading keyboards are just one of the curses us writers have to put up with, I suppose.

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February 15, 2010 by amanda

My reading habits: Where are your books now?

I guess that most writers out there are avid readers. I know I certainly am, and that doesn’t just mean I read a lot, but that I acquire books like some people acquire bread and milk, and then I read these books in various rooms of the house at various times and basically make a widespread book mess. And yes, it drives my husband quite mad.

I thought it’d be interesting to do a quick survey of the house and find out where my current reads are. Of course, there are a couple by the bed. At a minimum, I usually have two books on the go next to my bed, for reading in the evening before I go to sleep, and there are two because it depends whether I have the energy left for something heavier, more literary, or if I’m exhausted and just need something lighter.

Moving on through the house, there is always a book on the dining table near the kitchen. If my husband goes to work too early (therefore eating breakfast long before me), then that’s there to read. I nearly always manage to resist reading at the table when he’s there! Sometimes this book might move to the kitchen bench or, like now, there might be another book there entirely – that’s the one I read while I’m cooking dinner, in those pauses between stirring something.

Out in the living room, there is often a book either on the sofa or the coffee table, and that usually gets attacked during ad breaks while I’m watching TV, or occasionally when I have the chance to sit down and actually spend time devoted to reading of an afternoon (that’s rare).

And finally, there is always a book in whichever handbag I’ve used last – there to be read in a waiting room or on the train or during some kind of interruption to whatever I should be doing. See what a good girl scout I am – always prepared.

What about you? Where are your current books? Let me know in the comments – you know I’m curious.

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November 24, 2009 by amanda

Is a messy desk essential for a great fiction writer?

Messy desk

If you know me even just a little, you’ll probably be aware that I’m renowned for having a messy desk. Well, I’m a bit of a mess in general, but these days usually I manage to contain most of that to my own office area, under threat from my husband of him eating all my chocolate if I don’t. I actually love having a neat, tidy desk, but somehow it doesn’t seem that easy. I often tell people the story of my university days when I lived together with my father; when dinner time came around, he and I would both spend a few minutes moving our piles of books and papers off the dining room table (onto the floor) so we could eat, then move them back to the table when we’d finished. You see – a messy desk is genetic, it’s not my fault.

And furthermore … a messy desk might just be essential to my fiction writing abilities. In Andrea Goldsmith’s novel Reunion, there is a character named Ava who is a successful novelist. And about her, Goldsmith writes:

Ava was proof that if one is too much in thrall to everyday demands the imagination, for want of quiet and unfettered energy, becomes dormant. Her clothes were unpressed, her room was a shambles, her desk was a mess. Almost daily she would riffle the layers for a lost page, a lost pen, a phone number, and with mounting impatience would pledge to keep a tidy desk, a tidier life, but she never did. [My italics!]

My first feeling when I read this was relief; my second instinct said it might just be Goldsmith’s way of apologising for her own untidiness (I have no proof that she is untidy, but it would seem a lovely way to deal with it – spread the belief that the creativity of a novelist requires it, and she has the perfect alibi). So what do you all think – which of you writers out there have a messy desk at the moment? I’ve admitted mine in the picture above, although this is one of its tidier moments. Now I’m off to be imaginative.

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February 12, 2009 by amanda

Writing down the ideas – anywhere

All writers know the problem of getting hit with an idea and desperately needing to write it down somewhere so you don’t forget about it. My amused husband has got used to my odd nocturnal wanderings to write down an idea (and has also got used to telling me, after writing it down, that now I should shut my brain down and actually get some sleep. He has a point.).

Since a lot of my great ideas come in the shower, I’ve often contemplated a method for making notes there – some kind of pen to write on my shower screen (an easily, but not-too-easily, washable one, of course) and sometimes I even keep a notepad on the bathroom sink when I’ve actually set myself the task of thinking through a writing problem in the shower.

Musicians need to write down ideas too

Well, it turns out us writers are not alone. I guess musicians are a kind of writer – they’re writing music and lyrics, which sounds infinitely harder than a novel – and so they are also hit with ideas at random times. Perhaps their equivalent of my being in the shower is playing their guitars or pianos or whatever – and that’s where this post I just read about Coldplay singer Chris Martin comes in.

He has hit upon a pretty neat idea for capturing song ideas while he’s at the piano. He simply writes them on the piano. Agghh! I hear some of you saying, and surely my mother who would have murdered me if I had written ideas on our shiny black piano (and don’t worry Mum, I haven’t started now that I’ve got the piano here with me). But Chris Martin is a famous man and he’s allowed to write on pianos.

In any case, the bit that intrigues me even more is what he does with the these notes over time. Basically, the piano gets full up, and eventually, he just gets the piano repainted. And then he starts all over again.

I love having scribbles about my ideas all over the place, so I can certainly imagine having a piano covered in them could be quite inspiring. Most of my ideas are tucked into beautiful notebooks, but now I’m imagining creating posters full of my odd ideas, framing them, and making a fortune by selling them when I become famous. I’d better go start making notes.

Because blogging is all about other blogs …

As a sidenote, I clicked over and found this story through a circuitous bloggy route – Darren Rowse of ProBlogger posted on Twitter that Gina Trapani (Lifehacker founder) had started a new blog – I trust him, I trust Lifehacker and so I found my way to Smarterware. It’s a nice looking blog and if you read me because you empathise with my procrastination problem and my to-do list addiction, then you might also get something out of it.

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November 10, 2008 by amanda

Because this blog’s about procrastination, too

A funny thing just happened to me.

I was procrastinating about getting a bit of work done – or I could fudge that and say I was taking a bit of a break after getting a stack of work done this morning (that’s true – I wrote my first 2,500 words for NaNoWriMo and also did a heap of blogging).

In any case, one click led to another and I was suddenly taking a 20-question quiz on procrastination. At the end they told me my score was 30/100 and that meant my test result is low – I don’t procrastinate very often. Well, you can imagine I was kind of surprised by this, because I think I’m the Queen of Procrastination.

But it turns out it all depends on what counts as procrastination. Paying bills late, for example, is an example they use of procrastinating. I’m a stickler for paying bills on time (my father was a bank manager; although ironically I suspect he doesn’t pay his bills on time. I’m sure my mother does, though). Calling people back within an appropriate time means I’m not a procrastinator. The most ironic question was one about a situation in which I urgently needed to do some work, but my desk was messy – would I clean it first or just sit down and work? Because I’m even better at being messy than I am at procrastinating, I chose sitting down and doing the work.

One bit that made me think perhaps my procrastination problem is not as bad as I thought was the realisation that when it comes to work issues, I don’t procrastinate badly enough for anyone else to notice. Very few of my editors would think that I get my work in late. Certainly in my teaching job I don’t do anything that approaches procrastination. And quite on the contrary, some colleagues and friends who know the combination of teaching and writing I do have commented that I’m actually super-organised.

Hmm. So where does this leave my excuses for not writing? I’m starting to think that the majority of my procrastination problem really is centred on fiction writing, which is tragic when it’s one of the things I love the most in life. That’s why events like NaNoWriMo are perfect for me, because they add that external pressure that I need, the deadlines that all other parts of my life seem to have that help me overcome the procrastination urge. That’s something for me to think about.

And in the meantime, I know there are a few fellow procrastinators who read this blog, so if you need an excuse to waste a few minutes, do the quiz and tell me your scores. Maybe you’ll be as surprised as I was.

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July 30, 2008 by amanda

Are my lists making me procrastinate more?

I read a scary headline today at a website I half-heartedly follow. It went like this: News Flash – To-Do List Fans are Closet Procrastinators. The first point is that this is certainly no news flash for me, and I’m not even a closet procrastinator – I think I’ve made it quite clear to many (and especially on this blog) that my procrastinating is a highly-developed skill. And yes, my obsession with to-do lists is linked to this.

So what can I learn from this non-news-flash? Well, as they quite rightly point out, sometimes to-do lists become long and un-do-able, making you feel overwhelmed and unlikely to do anything at all. I’m sometimes guilty of this and sadly, one of the first things to go when I can’t keep my list under control is my fiction writing. (But the first of all is the housework!). It’s a reminder not to make my to-do lists unmanageable, and to be aware that when a list gets overwhelming I should stop and do something about it. Rewrite it, prioritise it, and be nice to the fiction-writing side of it.

As for the housework … well, some things just don’t need to be on a list, do they?

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June 27, 2008 by amanda

Writing deadlines, procrastination and impatience

I was just thinking in the shower (it’s no secret it’s my favourite place to think), and I realised there is one step more to my writing procrastination problem that I need to deal with: impatience.

My mother (among many others, no doubt) can well attest to the fact that I have something of an impatient personality. She often tells the story that when I was a child and I came to her and said I wanted to learn how to do something (for example, sew, cook, do something on the computer) she soon discovered that her life was much easier if she instructed me immediately. Then I’d happily amuse myself (hopefully for a while – if not, sorry Mum!). If she didn’t, I’d nag incessantly. Once I wanted to know something, I wanted to know it right then.

I just realised that this impatient streak hits my writing too. It explains absolutely perfectly why the second half of my draft novel (the first one, set in Japan) is nowhere near as good as the first half – in my opinion and according to feedback. I just wanted it to be finished, so in the last half I took less care and used the “near enough is good enough” philosophy a bit too often. That, combined with the fact that I was writing it to a deadline – the best way to overcome my procrastination – led to a flawed product.

My big hope is that just the process of having realised this will help solve the problem. As I said, this weekend I’m planning to get back to some rewriting of said “impatiently finished” novel, so we’ll see if I can do it patiently. If nothing else, I’m going to start the fixing-up process with the second half of the manuscript, the neglected-by-my-impatience half, so at least the attention each bit’s been given might balance out a bit.

Anyone out there recognise the combination of procrastination and impatience, or is it just me?

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June 21, 2008 by amanda

The excuses for not writing that I’ll never use again

I discovered a great fiction-writing blog called Drops of Blood recently and this week Carolyn started a series which is right down my alley … she’s taking note of the various excuses she provides herself when she doesn’t work on her fiction writing, and then trying to find ways to avoid having that excuse rear its ugly head again.

Her first Why I Didn’t Write excuse is a very simple one – she slept too late. (Mental note to self: I haven’t actually used this excuse with myself yet! But I’m a morning person, so I tend to have a book-end excuse at the other end of the day – it’s too late for me to think creatively). Sleeping too late is relatively easily fixed, but it all replies on a bit of self-discipline. That’s not so easy, I know.

Anyway, Carolyn inspired me to think about the various excuses I give myself for not working on my fiction writing, and I decided I’d just make a long list now and then ban myself from using these excuses ever again. Sounds (much too) simple but you never know. My brain has been tricked by less.

  • I have to finish the writing I get paid for first
  • I’m too tired
  • I feel like watching TV or a DVD (rarely, but it does happen)
  • I can do it tomorrow … there’s no deadline
  • I’ll just read a chapter (or three) of that book and then I’ll feel more inspired
  • I’m hungry and/or thirsty
  • The cats are bugging me to play with them instead of sitting here typing (it’s true, they can be really annoying, one likes to put her sharp little claws into my behind!)
  • I have to do the washing/unload the dishwasher/vacuum (who would’ve thought I’d ever rather do those things?)

The totally irritating thing is I don’t think I’ve ever actually experienced writers’ block – I’ve never sat there and not known what to write. It’s just that I don’t always get myself to the sitting there stage. So now I formally announce that I will never use any of the above excuses again.

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