Capturing Creativity

Creativity is a lovely, elusive creature that likes to be wooed. Not with chocolates or with expensive bottles of wine. It wants time and attention. Nothing more, nothing less.

How much time? How much ya got? Attention? ALL OF IT.

The monkey on my back prefers a daily word count goal - well - the five days a week I commit to give to the care and feeding of writing. Some weeks, it's seven days, others, it's six, but I move heaven and earth to make sure that at least five days a week find my butt parked on a bench at a local tea shop pouring out English Breakfast and 2k words.

Creativity swoons for ritual. It doesn't have to be chanting in dead languages or wearing funky robes, though those things would certainly work if you're into that kind of thing. Not that I can say much about the robes, since Wiccans have more than their fair share, generally speaking.

In my case, ritual is all about getting the blood moving. The creativity summoning begins when I pack up my bicycle bags, layer up the Goretex, and hop on the 12 speed (yes, I do still live in the stone age, be quiet) and ride into town to the tea shop. Bonus points to me if I can arrive before the shop opens. The bike ride shuts down the hypercritical portions of my brain. The ride leaves me more awake and alive. Once the shop opens, I unpack the netbook and the MP3 player. Order tea. Plug in the headphones to pipe creepy music directly into my brain, boot up the netbook, and start typing.

It's slow going at first. Words and ideas come hard. The first hour is frustrating. But then I realize two hours are gone and look, I've blown past my halfway point and I'm going faster. The scenes are coming together and the ideas are flowing. And the funny thing? Even when I stop for the day and ride home, creativity sticks around. The ideas keep showing up, as if my characters and their world are reluctant to let me go. I jot down bunches of notes for the next day's word count.

Success begets success. It's not a surprise that research shows that the more you succeed, the more you succeed, therefore, set goals you can achieve more often than you fail, and you increase your chances of achieving those goals over the long term. The same can be said of creativity. Show up. Sit down. Focus. Do the writing, even if it sucks (or you just think it does). Repeat. Keep repeating. And one day, you'll look up and that lovely, elusive creativity critter will be sitting across from you, winking at you.

Non-Routine

by Allison Pang

My life is usually pretty chaotic - partially just the way things work out and partially because I'm pretty lazy. I don't keep track of things very well. I don't organize much. I don't schedule. I don't even plan on what we're having for dinner on a daily basis.

Just not in my makeup, I guess.

So when it comes to writing, I'm probably pretty lucky I ever managed to write ONE book, let alone three.

In the early stages of my writing career, I didn't have much of a writing schedule at all. I wrote when I felt like it - and my word count was sporadic at best. And of course, I always had an excuse as to why I couldn't write that day - too stressed, too tired, too whatever. So I'd read a lot of books on how to write, but as much as I was learning about the subject, I sure wasn't doing very much of it. I was my own worst enemy - sabotaging myself before I'd even really begun.

When I decided to finally implement a daily word count, I forced myself to stick with it. 1000 words a day, hell or high water...and before long, I had over 100k and the rough draft of what would become A Brush of Darkness.

Since that time, I've stuck with that minimum word count and it's worked fairly well. I have modified my approach somewhat, however. I do most of my writing at night now, but when I was first starting out, I would stress myself out every day about when I would have time to get it done. I was constantly trying to fit it in after work - around the kids and dinner and all the little things I have to do in the evening.

It made for an extremely cranky mommy and I definitely didn't like the way I  felt like I was choosing my work over my family.

So I made a bargain with myself to stop trying to write in the earlier evening - I would come home after work and do the family thing, giving my kids my undivided attention - until they went to bed. And then I would write and however long it took, I would get my 1000 words in. (Which usually meant staying up until about 1 AM  or so.) The offshoot of this was that I could get my snuggle time in guilt free, and that made a world of difference in my stress level, because I knew I had time set aside.

The bad news is that I wasn't writing until 10 or 11 PM - and after a full day of work and family stuff, that can make for some slow writing. (I tried reversing it and getting up super early to write, but that *really* made me a cranky ass for the rest of the day, so I couldn't keep it up.)

It's the best I've got at the moment (although it's slightly more complicated now, due to the pain killers I've been taking for my back. Yes, they help with the pain, but I also get somewhat stoned for a little while. Mellow is nice, but it makes it a bit hard to focus.)

However, I have started doing timed writing sessions the last few weeks with a friend (which I talked about earlier this week on my own blog) and it's really made a big difference. And the weird thing is that I've done the timed thing before but I never really stuck with it.  And now? I'm even increasing my word count to about 1200 to 1500 words for the hour, which is crazy - but there it is.

So maybe I need to be accountable to someone other than myself to make an actual routine stick. For now, I'll take it. :)

Releases & Routines

It's a very special Tuesday here at the bordello. Today our beloved Wednesday Word-Whore Linda has a new book on the shelves!  Three Woots and a Hoo for Linda!

Shattered Circle
Book 6 in the Persephone Alcmedi Series

JUST YOUR AVERAGE MEGA-WITCH. . . .
It’s tough being a modern woman, but Persephone Alcmedi has it worse than most. Being the prophesied Lustrata has kicked her career as a witch into high gear, and juggling a wærewolf boyfriend who is about to become king of his kind and a seductive vampire who bears her magical Mark isn’t easy either. 

Seph’s beloved foster daughter, Beverley, is causing more trouble than these two men put together. The young girl’s been playing with a magical artifact that’s far more dangerous than she realizes. Now Seph must summon help from a mystical being so potent that even vampires fear him . . . and the cost of his aid may be more than she’s willing to pay. Seph, Johnny, and Menessos face threats from all sides—and a few from within. Will the forces of destiny cement their tenuous supernatural union, or shatter it forever?

Buy on Amazon          Buy on B&N       Buy on Simon & Schuster

That, dear readers, is what comes at the end of a writing routine. That is also just the beginning of a marketing & promotions routine. Yep, I aspire to need the latter. I'd like to make it to the end of the former ... now that I mention it. I will wax poetic on routines of creating the story, but I'm not much use on how that routine adjusts when editorial input arrives.

Wouldn't you rather be reading Linda's book right now?

I am a creature of habit. The routine of writing is important because my brain is trained to perform certain tasks at certain times. If I deviate from the routine, then story-stuff doesn't happen. I'm not the sort of girl who can "sneak in" a "few hundred words." No, no, I'm either in the world I created or I'm tuned to the real world. My brain does not play the hokey-pokey.

Seriously, why aren't you settled in with Seph and Johnny?

While the routine of writing is fairly straight-forward: ass-in-seat, write; it is different from the routine of editing. How? When I create, I write the events in the order in which they happen. When I edit I start with the biggest change -- wherever that may occur -- then follow the ripples of changes it creates. It may mean I fiddle with Chapter Six eighteen times while Chapter Twelve loses a few sentences once. So be it. At the editing stage I'm essentially playing Cat's Cradle keeping track of the plot threads. Strangely enough, when I edit, I sit in a different place than when I create. It's part of the brain-training.

Menessos: the name is awesome and the vamp himself is... 

You should read about him, right now.

What comes after the editing? There's the WiP to WoS routine. After that ... I'll have to let you know once it happens.

How about you, dear reader-writer, do your routines change as you progress through the creative process? How? When?

Setting Writing Routines - by the Day or by the Deadline?

I'm sitting here on Sunday morning, with my first-thing-in-the-morning beverages (fresh-squeezed lemon in water and turmeric tea, if you're interested) and writing my Word Whores blog post. This is what I do pretty much every Sunday morning.

This is less because I'm a creature of habit - because I'm really not - but because this is part of my writing routine. I've deliberately ritualized my writing process, to ensure that I produce work on a regular basis.

So in answer to this week's question, do our writing routines hinge off of what day it is or where we are in a story, I say: Yes.

I'm really tempted to just stop there.

Snort.

Okay, so here's my deal. And this has changed somewhat over the last year or so.

The What Day It Is Part

I write every day except Saturday (caveat to follow). I write in the morning, which is part of making sure nothing else gets in the way of it. I hit the gym first thing and am usually at my desk by 7am. I write blog posts - either for my blog or guest posts - or fill out interviews - by way of warming up. Then I turn on Freedom and write. I used to write for one hour, then 90 minutes. Now I write for 2.5 hours.

After I finish my writing time - which I'll extend if I have to, to hit my word-count goal, I switch to the day job. I work for an environmental consulting firm and put in 8-9 hours/day on that. Sometimes I have early conference calls or have to talk to junior staff about tasks for the day, so they can get going, but I prefer to concentrate on one thing at a time. Once I switch to day job work, I'm all about that.

The Where I Am in the Story Part

My normal thing, for quite a long time now, has been to write 1,000 words/day. On this relatively lazy (for me) schedule, I'd write every day. All of my tracking spreadsheets are set up for a minimum of 7,000 words each week. There are times (holidays with family, vacations, the occasional sick day) when I don't get this, but usually I do. I've started tracking my monthly word counts. In December, I put in only just-over 12K words. However, I'd deliberately given myself a break after finishing several large projects to enjoy the holidays and I was going back and forth with my editors and agent doing edits on a couple of projects. Edits are word-count killers, alas.

However - and a lot of you who read my personal blog know this - I've been "training" to increase my daily wordcount. So, when I have a deadline to meet, I go for much more. Thus the increase to 2.5 hours in the morning, which lets me get in 2,300-3,000 words per day. With Saturdays off.

I'm on that schedule right now because the 90K e-serial is due at the end of March. I'm also hoping to write an 18-30K novella for an anthology, which is due March 1. My bargain with myself is, if I can hit a certain wordcount on the e-serial by a certain date in February, I can switch off (and likely send what I have so far to the CPs for crazy-check) and write that novella. All of this is with an eye to finishing the e-serial by mid-March, to allow for revision time.

I hold Saturdays in reserve, if I need to ratchet up.

One thing I've discovered is that, if I have a full day to write - a weekend or something like the Martin Luther King holiday - I can get 5,000 words in. That can make up for sick days or blown-to-hell-by-the-day-job days. As Word Whore Linda mentioned last week, padding the schedule and factoring in wiggle-room in case of disruption can make all the difference in meeting those deadlines.

And, with that, I shall publish this post, make my coffee and breakfast and clock in for those 2.5 hours.

See you all on the flip side!