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The Writing Life: A Jump Start

10. For most of us, getting started is the hardest part.

 9. This is true whether we're talking about starting a draft of a story, or starting a long-term writing habit.

 8. I stare at the screen, hundreds of students have told me over the years. The cursor blinks and blinks. I go check Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat/Twitter and when I come back, the screen is still blank, and the cursor is still taunting me.

 Sounds painful, I say.

 Oh, it is, they assure me.

 7. Is all that pain and pressure necessary? (No) What if there was an easier way? (There is.)

 6. Before you start rejoicing, read the following fine print: That "easier way" is going to be different for everyone. Every writer has a different process. What works for me may not work for you.

 5. So how can you find your "easier way?" Trial and error. Try a bunch of different approaches until you find the way that works for you.

 (Don't worry, though. There shouldn't be a whole lot of error. I've been helping writers get started for a while, and I have a pretty good sense of what works for most people.)

 4. Give it ten days. That's all I ask. Each day you'll try something different. Each day you'll reflect on how well it went.

 3. Skeptical? Think of this as a game. When you play a game, you don't take half-measures. You don't skulk around dubiously. You throw yourself into it.

 2. By the end of this game, you'll have made some important discoveries about your creative process. You'll have a ton of material and a ton of momentum. You won't have a finished draft of a story/essay/whatever, but we're after bigger game here: forming the foundation of a sustainable writing practice. If we play this game right, you'll keep rolling long after the regimen ends, and the stories/essays/whatevers will finish themselves.  

 1. Ready to start?

 Here's what you'll need:  

 ·      Time

o   About thirty minutes at first, and you'll work up to seventy-five minutes by the end of the regimen. Time is at the top of this list because it's what writers need more than anything.

·      Two journals: One for writing, one for reflecting.

o   These journals can be physical notebooks, or they can be separate Word documents. Your choice whether to type or write longhand.

·      A pen you like

o   It doesn't have to be superfancy. Just something you enjoy using. If you're planning on typing everything, you don't need to get a pen at all.

·      A timer

o   You'll time your sessions. You can do this with a watch or an app or your kitchen timer, whatever's convenient for you.

·      A place to write

o   This is purposely vague. Some people like the commotion of coffee shops, others like to write at home. Spend a little time thinking about what kind of place will be most beneficial (and least disruptive) for your writing.  

·      Snacks/drinks

o   Totally optional.  

After you gather your materials, proceed to Day 1.

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Day 1: Ten Boxes

(estimated time: 30 minutes)

 Welcome to day one! Today is about setting you up to succeed with this regimen. Toward that end, you'll frame out some time for your writing over the next nine days, and you'll do some thinking about your current creative process and your relationship to writing. One last thing: Remember to time each session, which starts when you open up the day's post.

 Prep:

Open up your calendar. For each of the next nine days, schedule a block of time for your writing. I want you to experience what it's like to plan to write (instead of just saying I'll fit it in somewhere . . . . after I get done with all my work/ errands/emails/housework/etc.). For the next nine days, block out that time and protect it. How much time? Give yourself an hour for days 2-5, and an hour and a half for days 6-10. You may not use all that time for writing, but it's better to have a little extra time on your hands than to cut your writing session short.  

Read:  

Read this short article about Seinfeld's technique for creative productivity.

 Create:

Make a sheet with ten boxes. You can make it on the computer or draw it by hand or do cross-stitch—your call. The important thing is to create it and display it somewhere you'll see it every day for the next ten days.

 Then make an X (or whatever mark you choose) in the first box. You've committed your creative act for the day. Success!

 Reflect:  

Write on the following prompts in your reflection journal:

 Describe your current process. When you want to write something, how do you get started? What happens after that? Take me through your cycle.

 How do you feel about this process? How does this process make you feel? (Maybe your answer is the same for both of these questions, but maybe it's not.)

 Why are you doing this ten day experiment?

 What do you want to get out of this experience?

 Re: writing—What are you afraid of?

 Re: writing—What's the worst thing that could happen?

 Last question: How much time did this writing session take?  

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Day 2: Freewriting

(estimated time: 45 minutes)

(Remember to start your timer)

 Back in the day, I worked at a summer camp. It had a pump like the one above. At the beginning of the season, it was such a pain in the ass to use—especially the first time after months of disuse. You'd prime the thing and then pump and pump and pump until your shoulder burned and the pump would groooooaaaan like it had been gutshot and then, just when you were ready to give up and drink lakewater, the pump would belch and out would come some gross brown liquid. But if you kept pumping, eventually you'd get the clearest, coldest water ever.

 The next day you'd have to prime and pump and pump, but by the third or fourth day of regular use, that pump would give you clear water at the first touch.  

 Creativity is like a pump. If you don't exercise it very often, it's going to be hard to get anything to come out. But once you get it going—and if you exercise it on a regular basis—creativity will pour out of you.

 Today you're going to work on freewriting, which is a great way to exercise your pump (that sounded gross, but you know what I mean) and to let material spill out of you.  

 Prep:

Take a moment to block out anything that might distract you. This might mean closing a door, or putting your phone on Do Not Disturb, or removing yourself to a library, or putting on headphones and playing white noise or the sound of rain, or downloading a program on your computer that can block email and social media during your writing session (like Self Control for Mac or FocusMe for PC). Be intentional about setting up your isolation chamber writing nest, and then begin.

 Read:  

Read these pieces on freewriting from Peter Elbow and Natalie Goldberg.

 Create:

Set a timer for ten minutes. (Here's an online countdown timer.) Freewrite for ten minutes, then take a short break. Get up, shake your hands out, move around a little bit. Don't check email or get sucked into the internet. After a couple of minutes, settle back into your writing space and run another ten minute session.

 Reflect:

What surprised you (either about the reading, or in your own writing)?

 What went well with this session?

 What went not-so-well (and why do you think it went not-so-well)?

 Anything you want to do differently next time you freewrite? Anything you want to try?

  Put an X in your box for day two, and jot down the amount of time you took for this session.

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Day 3: Idea Starter

(estimated time: 45 minutes)

 My friend Jim likes to bake bread. In his fridge, he keeps a sourdough starter. Also known as "mother dough," a starter is a goopy mixture of flour, water, and yeast. When Jim wants to make a loaf, he scoops out a tablespoon of mother dough, mixes it with some flour and water, and  . . . well, I don't know what he does next, but that's not the point of this story. This story is about the mother dough, which he "feeds" with a little flour and water before sticking it back in the fridge so it will be ready for the next loaf. The point is that once you have a starter, it can last forever. This one mother can have a million offspring.

 I could talk about bread all day long, but I should probably connect this story to writing. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a starter for ideas? Wouldn't it be great if you had a mother dough for stories or essays or poems or whatever?

 Glad tidings, writers. Today, I'm going to show you a starter that you carry within you, the mother of mother doughs: Your memory. To tap into your memory, you'll write a series of lines that all start with the phrase, "I Remember." Whatever you remember, you write down. That's it!

 This simple but powerful exercise is based on a book of the same name by Joe Brainard, an artist and writer, who collected his “I Remember”s in several editions, and are available in book form. The real beauty of this exercise is that you can go back to it again and again, and it will always yield something surprising.

 Prep/Read:

Pick out a book. Find one that:

·      You've already read.

·      Is similar in some way to the stuff you want to write. Maybe it's in the same genre, or has the kind of voice you're going for, or maybe it has some kind of spiritual kinship with your work that you can't quite put your finger on.

 Set a countdown timer for 10-15 minutes and read a few pages. Because you've read it before, you already know how things turn out, so you won't be reading for plot. This time, with a little luck, you might notice something about the writer's techniques, which could help you with your own writing. (As I always tell my students: If you steal another writer's words, that's called plagiarism. If you steal another writer's techniques, that's called learning.)

 Even if you don't consciously notice anything about technique, though, this is still a good exercise to prepare you for writing. Think of it like taking a deep breath before singing out.  

 Create:

Treat your mind like a magic eight ball: whatever floats up gets written on the page—no matter how trivial or embarrassing it might seem. You're the only one who's going to see this exercise.

 One I remember does not have to be related to the next one. It's okay to jump around to different points and periods in your life.

 One I remember can be related to the next one, though. Sometimes you dig into a memory and start remembering all kinds of stuff—but don't abandon the I remember frame and start writing the story about that incident. There will be time for that on a different day.

 Timebox this exercise: Do ten minutes, take a short break, then do another ten minutes.

 Keep the pen moving until the timer stops. As long as your pen is moving, your mind is engaged and will send something else your way. Think of it like the icemaker in your fridge. You know how sometimes you jam your glass against the lever and the freezer groans and grinds away, but for a few seconds nothing clunks into your glass? Do you walk away, saying, No ice for me, I guess? No, you keep your glass jammed against the lever and you wait, because you can feel that ice coming.

 Want a model before you start? Here's an excerpt of some I Remembers from Joe Brainerd:

I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.

I remember how much I used to stutter.

I remember the first time I saw television.  Lucille Ball was taking ballet lessons.

I remember Aunt Cleora who lived in Hollywood. Every year for Christmas she sent my brother and me a joint present of one book.

I remember a very poor boy who had to wear his sister's blouses to school.

I remember shower curtains with angel fish on them.

I remember very old people when I was very young. Their houses smelled funny.

I remember daydreams of being a singer all alone on a big stage with no scenery, just one spotlight on me, singing my heart out, and moving my audience to total tears of love and affection.

 Reflection:

What surprised you about this exercise?

 What worked well today? What didn't work so well?

 Re: the time and place you've been writing—how is that working for you? Would you like to try anything different in regard to time and place?

 What did you learn about yourself as a writer today?

 Put an X in the box for Day 3 and jot down how much time you spent on this writing session.

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Day 4: Idea Starter #2

(estimated time: 60-75 minutes)

 Yesterday, you made one kind of starter. Today I'm going to show you two more starters, courtesy of Kelly Link, author of GET IN TROUBLE and other books. Link has come up with a couple of clever ways to create her own "well of story ideas."

 Prep:

Try the five minute breathing meditation here. You'll need headphones or a private space for listening.

 Read:

Read this little article by Kelly Link.

 Create:

Step 2: For 15 laser-focused minutes, build a list of Things You Most Like in Other People's Stories (or essays, or poems, or articles, or whatever mode you prefer). You can use this online countdown timer if you like.

 Step 3: Take a five minute break. I'm not kidding. Some of you will want to skip this step, thinking, Yeah, yeah, I just want to get this done, Furunicorn. But come on, play my game. Observe the effect a short break can have on your focus and stamina. Get your ass out of the seat and move around a little (-10 points if you open a new tab and check Instagram).

 Step 4:  Now sit back down and reset your timer. For the next 15 minutes, come up with as many "first lines" for stories as you can. Don't put too much pressure on this. They're not all going to be winners. Go for quantity.

 Reflection

How did this go today? What worked, and what didn't work?

 Re: timeboxing—The idea is that you can increase your productivity by alternating periods of focus and rest. We've taken this approach for several days now. Is it working for you, or do you think you work better with a long, sustained period of focus instead of short sprints?

 Remember to put an X through day 4 on your tracker, and log your time.

*I practice what I preach. Pics of my efforts below:

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Day 5: Mapping

(estimated time: 60-75 minutes)

 The entry point to writing is not always through language. You can find your way to a story—or an essay or a poem or whatever—through other avenues. Like drawing.

 Prep:

If you're anything like me, your mind is a buzzing gnat-cloud of reminders and nagging worries and wounded feelings and shopping lists. These gnats make it hard to concentrate. Even if I try to ignore them, a part of my brain keeps track of the gnats, worried I'm going to forget about one of them. Or, worse, I succeed in ignoring them and actually forget something important (Oh, shit! I was supposed to take Eli to the library at 5:00!).

 If you can't deal with the gnats and you can't ignore them, what can you do? Offload them. Move them from your mind onto paper. They can wait there for you until you're done with writing.

 Before we get to the creative portion of today's exercise, I want you to offload. Set a countdown timer for five minutes and jot down anything that is nagging at you. What is on your mind? What is bothering you? What is getting in the way of concentrating today? What are you worried about forgetting?    

 After you're done, keep that piece of paper nearby. If another gnat buzzes into your mind during your creative session, add it to the sheet.

 Create:

Today I'm going to have you access some stories through a drawing. Specifically, a map of your old neighborhood. (For the purposes of this exercise, you get to define what "old neighborhood" means for you.)

 Step 1: Set your countdown timer for 10 minutes and sketch out your map. Don't worry if it's "good" or "bad." It doesn't matter for an exercise like this. No one is going to see it, anyway. Label landmarks and include as much detail as you can remember.

 Step 2: Take a little break, then set your countdown timer for 10 minutes. Annotate the map. Put an X anywhere there was an Incident of Any Significance (For the purposes of this exercise, you get to define what "significance" means for you). Include as many Xs as you can remember.

 Next to each X, jot down a very short description of the incident. For example, I might put an X on the big hill next to my childhood home. For a description, I might write: Lost finger. The description only needs to make sense to you at this point.  

 Step 3: You know how, when you read certain stories, you feel like you're there? That's the effect of a fully-imagined scene. The story contains enough concrete details and sense impressions for your mind to build the set and inhabit the scene with the characters. That's what you're going to do now: Build the set for a story.

 Pick one of the Xs. Set your countdown timer for 18 minutes, and write with the prompts below. Write fast and loose. You're not drafting the story of The Incident—don't worry, you'll get a chance to do that on another day—you're just excavating the material. You're just building the set.

 The prompts (adapted from Syllabus by Lynda Barry):

 Where are you?

 What time of day or night does it seem to be?

 What season does it seem to be?

 Describe the light.

 What's the temperature like?

 What does the air smell like?

 What are you doing?

 Is anyone else there with you?

 What are they doing?

 Why are you there?

 What sounds can you hear?

 What are some things you can see?

 If you turned your head to the right, what would be there?

 If you turned your head to the left, what would be there?

 What's behind you?

 What's below and around your feet?

 What's above your head?

 There is something you haven't noticed yet—what is it? It can be very small.

Reflect:

What was it like to use drawing as an entry point to writing?

 What did you learn about writing, or about yourself as a writer today?    

 Think back to the first day you started this regimen. What's changed?

 Put an X through day 5 and jot down the time you took with this writing session.

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Day 6: Writing with the Body

(estimated. time: 60-75 minutes)

I heart Sondra Perl, the godmother of “felt sense.” That’s all that I’ll say by way of introduction today, because Dr. Perl will give you a wonderful zen-like introduction to the process when you get to the "reading" for today.

 Prep: (adapted from a Lynda Barry exercise):

Draw a little dot on a page. Then draw a tight spiral around the dot, going around and around. Get the lines of the spiral as close together as possible. Keep drawing the spiral for three or four minutes. For some people, it's an easy way to gather your attention onto the page. For me, it helps me access a daydream state—a state that's good for my writing—though I can't explain why it works. Here's an example:    

 Read:

Listen to Dr. Perl's introduction here—you’ll need headphones or a private space for listening today—and then proceed to one of the other videos that will coach you through your writing session today.

  Create:

Write along with one of the “Guidelines for Composing” videos. You can either generate a new idea to write about, or you can develop an idea you came up with earlier in the regimen —your call.

 Reflect:

List the conditions for your writing session today (e.g. morning, easy chair+lapdesk, coffee, children upstairs, etc.) Which conditions are working for you? Which conditions are working against you?

 Re: “Guidelines for Composing”—What worked for you? What didn’t work so well?

 What did you learn about writing, or about yourself as a writer today?

 Put an X in the box for day 6 and log the time you took with today’s session. 

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Day 7: Undraft

(estimated time: 60-75 minutes)

 Want to get writer's block in two easy steps? Here's how:

1.    Put a ton of pressure on yourself.

2.   Insist on writing your first draft from beginning to end, from the first line straight through the last line.

 Don't believe me? Try it. Go to your keyboard, crack your knuckles, and say, "Great American novel, here we go!" Enjoy the next hour of creative constipation.

 Or you could try a different approach. In the fall of 2016, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James was on campus. When a student asked him how he starts working on a project, he said several interesting things:

1.    "Lower the stakes."  To put it another way, find a way to take pressure off yourself.

2.   "The first thing you write is not going to be the first thing people read." You can interpret this line a few different ways. Like: You don't have to draft in a linear fashion. Or: The final draft is going to be way different than the first draft, so don't worry about nailing it on the first try (because you won't. Because not even a Booker-prize winning writer nails it the first time.).  

3.   "You're just trying to get into the story. Being comfortable with it sucking lets you relax and get into it. The first pages are just a door to let you in. Somewhere along the way you'll find the real beginning."

 Taking off the pressure and just exploring sounds good, but how you do it? One way is to write an Undraft. The first and most important thing to know about an Undraft is that it is not a draft. You're not trying to write a story/poem/essay/whatever. You're just writing about it. You're generating material, not trying to shape it. You're playing with ideas, thinking on the page, writing towards discovery. Think: Notes and lists and questions and possibilities.

When I do an Undraft, I write in plural first-person for reasons that I don't understand (maybe it helps me feel less alone?). For example:

What if we made Smee a boy when he came aboard the Jolly Roger? Maybe there was a time in Neverland where they were all boys. (What does he look like as a boy, by the way? Figure that out later.)  

 No one will ever read this writing (Why would they? It's not even a draft), so there is zero pressure on it. You have permission to write toward discovery. You have permission to meander and explore and go down blind alleys and rabbit holes. You have permission to suck. You have permission to not rush, to relax and get into the story. An Undraft is not the story itself; it's the "door to let you in."

 Prep:

“I have advice for people who want to write," said Madeleine L'Engel. "I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.”

For today's prep, I'm going to zoom in on the part that I underlined about the "unpublishable journal." Writing in this way has (at least) two benefits.

1.    It helps you get out of your own way on the page.

2.   It helps you with characterization.

Characterization might employ some stats and attributes—At seventy years old, Charlie was still tall, and he had kept most of his hair, even if it was a little wispy. In the park, the wind kept blowing his hair down over his eyes as he watched a little kid drag his heel over an anthill, slowly leveling an entire civilization.—but that's not really the essence of characterization. Deep characterization is about personality and sensibility. To really know Charlie, we have to see the world through his eyes. If we know how he thinks and feels about things, we'll know him.

 There should really be two sets of parks, thought Charlie. One for kids and one for everyone else. Not that he could say this out loud. Everyone would think he was an asshole. Not the little tyrant who was now tossing fistfuls of sand up into the wind—no, that boy was a precious innocent, but if Charlie dared to object to getting sand in his eyes, then he was the asshole.

 For today's prep, I want you to write one unpublishable page about "what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair." You'll be writing from your own perspective for this page, but this kind of writing will teach you something about writing from a character's perspective later on.  

 Create:

Scan the story-ideas you've already generated (e.g. from the "I remember" exercise, or the map of your neighborhood, or from "Writing with the Body," or any of the other exercises). Pick one to work on today. Don't put too much pressure on this step. Just see what draws your attention. If you're fired up and ready to go with the Undraft, set your timer for somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes (your choice) and jump in.

 If you'd like a little more structure first, you might spend a few minutes generating some questions about your story-idea to answer in your Undraft. For example, these are some questions I might generate about my project:

What does Smee look like as a boy?

How did he get to Neverland?

What was his childhood like before he came to Neverland?

In other words, design your own prompts for guided freewriting.

 Reflect:

How did this go today? What worked well, what didn't work so well?

 Describe the conditions of your writing session today. What conditions worked with you; what conditions worked against you?

 How about internal conditions? Are there any ways in which you're working against yourself (e.g. criticizing yourself, or rushing, or distracting yourself, etc.)?

 If you were to try an Undraft again, what might you do differently?

 Make an X through day 7 and jot down how much time you took with this session.

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Day 8: Shitty First Draft

(estimated time: 70-85 minutes)

Today you're going to write a draft (or at least the start of a draft). But don't stress! We're going to keep the pressure and expectations low. You're not trying to nail your story/poem/essay/whatever on the first try. You're just writing a shitty first draft, as Anne LaMotte calls it. More on that below.

 Prep: Re-typing

Pick a text that you like. Novel, story, poem, essay, academic article—doesn't matter. It would be best if it's similar to the stuff you're trying to write, but it's your call. Once you've picked the text, copy a page (by typing it out or writing by hand, your choice).

 There are two purposes for this activity. The first is that you'll experience the text differently than when you read it. You'll feel the rhythm of the prose, and you'll notice more about the techniques behind the writing. You'll also get some writing momentum going, which makes this a nice warm-up. Many writers start their writing session with some easy task, and few tasks are easier than copying a page or two.

Read:

Shitty First Drafts by Anne LaMotte

Create:

Scan your material, from the Undraft to your list of first lines, and choose what you want to work on today. Apply butt to chair for 35-45 minutes. "When you get stuck," said William Stafford, "lower your standards and keep writing."

Reflect:

What surprised you—from the reading, or the prep, or your writing?

 What was easy about this approach for you? What was hard?

 What did you learn about yourself as a writer today?

 Put an X through day 8 and note the time you took with this session.

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Day 9: Keep Drafting

(Time estimate: 75-90 minutes)

Your job today is to draft away. You can either continue the draft you started yesterday, or start a new shitty first draft. Don't put pressure on yourself to finish anything today or to make some kind of spectacular breakthrough; just show up to the page and work. As Isak Dinesen said, "Write a little every day, without hope, without despair."

Prep:

You've learned a lot about your own creative process in the last eight days—what works and what doesn't, what helps and what hinders. Take ten minutes and draft a set of "Rules & Reminders." Think of these as instructions to yourself about how to sustain a writing practice. Think of these as a living document that will evolve as you evolve.

To give you a model (and to show you that I practice what I preach), I’ll post my latest version of “Rules & Reminders.” Every time I get a new notebook, I re-draft my reminders on the back page.

Create:

Set your timer for five minutes longer than yesterday. Draft away.

 Reflect:

Was today's session easy or hard (and what made it feel that way)?

 Think about how you approach writing now; think about your relationship with writing. How is it different than it was nine days ago?

 Put an X through day nine and log your time.  

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Day 10: The Best Laid Plans of Squids and Men

(estimated time: 90 minutes)

 Matthew Specktor, author of American Dream Machine and other novels, once told me something important about stories. "You know how squids swim?" he said, making his hand into a little squid that shot out its tentacles to jet forward, then gathered itself into a ball before shooting out its tentacles again. "That's how stories work. It's not all forward propulsion. They jet forward, and then gather themselves. Jet and gather."

You're already familiar with the pattern of jetting and gathering from your daily writing sessions. With the prep, you're gathering. When you create, you're jetting. And the reflection, of course, is gathering again.

 In a larger sense, though, the last nine days might feel like one big jet. You've written a ton, and generated enough ideas and story-starts to write ten more tons. So let's do a little gathering today to set yourself up for your next jet.

 Instead of getting into more creative work today, I'd like you to make some plans for the next month. How are you going to keep this creative momentum going? When (and how much, and where) will you write? And how will you hold yourself accountable for this plan?

 Prep:

 Pick your favorite/most productive form of preparation that you've tried during this regimen.  

 Read:

 Read this piece by Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and other books.

 Create:

 Make your plan for the next month. It doesn't have to be in the form of a contract, but make it specific and concrete. Consider the following questions:

 ·      When and where will you write?

·      How much will you write? (Will you measure by word count or time or . . . ?)

·      How will you start each day? What will your routine look like?

·      What day(s) will you take off?

·      How will you track your writing practice? How will you be accountable?

·      What do you need to be successful?

 Keep in mind that you're making a plan for one month. After that month is up, revisit the plan to re-evaluate and make adjustments.

 Reflect:

 Revisit your answers from day one's reflection. Update the answers and think about what has changed (and why).

 Put an X through day 10 and log your time. Then log some chocolate cake and beer.

 A Brief Valediction

You did it. You played the game—and it wasn't easy, was it? It took time and thought and no small amount of effort. You encountered obstacles in carving out time for this new habit of writing, but you found a way to overcome those obstacles to get to the page. That's the writing life, right there in a nutshell. You're living it, and do you know that that means? You're a writer.

 Congratulations. You earned that title.

 Now here's the catch: You gotta keep earning it. "You're a writer if you've written today," goes the old saying. That might be my favorite yardstick, because it keeps the focus on practice and creation, which is exactly where your—and my—focus belongs.

 Thank you for playing this game with me. Best of luck in your writing life, and I'll see you down the road.  

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The greatest regret I have is that, early in my career, I showed myself such cruelty for not having accomplished anything significant. I spent so much time trying to write, but was paralyzed by how behind I felt. Many years later I realized that if I had written only a couple of pages a day, I would’ve written 500 pages at the end of a year (and that’s not even working weekends). Any contribution you make on a daily basis is fantastic.

Matthew Weiner (via mttbll)

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The Creative Processor by Grant Snider.

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Six Writing Lessons from REAR WINDOW

So here's a short article from Writer's Digest. I'll hide most of it after the jump, in case you haven't watched the movie yet. Because spoilers. Anyway, here it is—

1. When in Doubt, Cast Doubt

There is a great scene not long after our wheelchair-bound protagonist and professional nosey neighbor, L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), becomes suspicious of his neighbor Thorwald (Raymond Burr). 

He observes his neighbor’s strange activities throughout the night, but is asleep during a key scene when Thorwald (whom Jefferies suspects killed his wife earlier that evening) is seen leaving his apartment with another woman just before dawn. Is Thorwald’s wife actually dead? Is Jefferies wrong about Thorwald? Just what does this scene do for us, the viewer?

First and foremost, it plants the seed in our mind that maybe our protagonist is about to harass and accuse an innocent man. And because Jefferies misses out seeing the mystery woman, he is still sure of himself that Thorwald did away with his wife in the night.

Granted, if he wasn’t asleep in that key moment, the movie could have ended right there. “Oh, there she is. All is well.” THE END

But all wasn’t well, was it? Allowing the reader to know more or different information than the protagonist is an excellent way to build suspense—and if anyone knew how to do that, it was Hitchcock! You can do the same by jumping to another scene without your primary characters and let other events unfold unbeknownst to your hero or heroine—one of the simple, more well-known powers of a third-person narrative. But it can be done in the first person POV as well by simply omitting a key detail and/or presenting facts that counter your protagonist’s line of thinking through secondary characters and hearsay. By introducing these conflicting pieces of evidence, we will find our protagonist toiling away on a “case” while we are on the edge of our seats, wondering if the protagonist is correct despite evidence that blurs the truth of the matter, or if the protagonist is going to end up in a very embarrassing and perhaps deadly situation for no reason at all aside from a hyperactive imagination.

2. Pile on the Doubt With Doubters

Nobody believes Jefferies, at first. Thorwald displays one odd habit after another, and Jefferies has to bend over backwards (hard to do in a full leg cast!) to convince his beautiful and fashionable girlfriend, Lisa, played by the one and only Grace Kelly, that he’s right. His old war buddy, now a detective, doesn’t believe him either, mostly because all of the evidence he’s able to find on Thorwald clears his name. Time after time, Jefferies seeks out the law for help and is rebuffed by facts and common sense until his friend finally tells him to lay off and mind his own business.

Does he? Of course not. Every doubter only serves to make Jefferies MORE convinced that he’s right. So feel free to throw speed-bumps in front of your own protagonist, and remember that they’re even more effective when they come from trusted allies and cast logical, reasonable doubt on each one of your protagonist’s suspicions.

3. Trick-or-Trait!

Just like every costumed kid who knocks on your door at Halloween gets a piece of candy, every minor character in your book deserves a trait. And Rear Window is full of minor characters, each fully brought to life with almost no dialogue at all. You have Miss Lonelyheart, a wistful middle-aged woman desperate for love; Miss Torso, the dancer across the courtyard who lives above a deaf sculptor who lives across from a musician constantly working on a piano composition who can look out his window and see another neighboring couple who sleep on their fire escape and own a small, nosey dog…one after the other after the other. With just a few unique details, Hitch brings a character to life and makes them memorable.

Consider your own characters and give them a twist…maybe that clerk at the DMV is deaf or is known for his lopsided hairpiece, maybe the sister-in-law at the funeral has a troublesome pet ferret, maybe the protagonist comes home each day to find the babysitter filling the house with music as she practices the viola. One or two unique traits can make minor characters stand out to a reader and can make your main characters look lazy, kind-hearted, nosey, intelligent, or pedantic by comparison. Writing a novel is like making chili in a crockpot—everything adds a little flavor and affects the final result, so have fun with the minor details.

4. All Five Senses Builds a Fine Atmosphere

The atmosphere Hitchcock builds throughout this film is genius. We hear music coming from other apartments, rain falling at night, street noise, dogs barking; we see each neighbor’s activities through their windows as well as sunsets, stormy clouds, and even Hitchock himself; we can almost taste andsmell that lobster dinner Lisa brings for Jefferies, the brandy swirling in their snifters as they entertain guests, the smoke from the cigar Thorwald puffs upon while he sits in the dark of his apartment; we canfeel the itch Jefferies cannot scratch while in his cast, the vertigo (oh, James Stewart and his vertigo problems) he feels when dangling from his window, the stinging, blinding light Jefferies flashes to ward off a murderous Thorwald. Every sense and emotion is engaged in this film, creating a brilliant symphony of real life. So as you look at the scenes you built in your novel, ask yourself, “What detail have I left out during the hundreds of times I have imagined this story before? What one wrinkle can I unfold to reveal a new emotion, sense, or detail in order to build the atmosphere I desire?” Consider this question scene by scene, chapter by chapter.

5. Location, Location, Location!

The entire story takes place in Jefferies apartment as he looks out his rear window. Yes, Hitchcock could have shown the detective friend going to the train station to talk to witnesses, or could have followed Lisa into Thorwald’s apartment through her own point of view (which might have been terrifying but no more so than seeing Thorwald approach little to her knowledge). But no, everything Hitchcock needed was right there in that courtyard, visible through Jefferies’ windows. And while that might seem like a gimmick, there are countless one-act plays and short stories that do the same, even some novels (Murder on the Orient Express comes to mind). And while you don’t need to have just one location, you DO need to have a good one, or many good ones. Your location can make or break your novel, so make sure you’ve selected the right place for your characters, a place that will bring out their best or worst qualities, a place that might hinder their ability to be a reliable narrator or a fully-aware character, a place that will push them out of their comfort zone. Challenge them with a unique setting!

6. Juxtaposition is SO Romantic

The romance between Jefferies and Lisa is strained and strained again because they just don’t seem right for each other. Jefferies is a rough-and-tumble adventure photographer who feels at home in a muddy jeep while Lisa is a fashionable New York socialite who is always (and I mean always) dressed to the nines. He constantly tells her that she’s too good for him and that he’s not made for her clean-cut world. But his longing glances when she leaves at night and the horrified concern he shows for her when she’s in danger (as well as the admiration he exhibits when she survives) clearly shows us that these two may not be peas in a pod, but there’s a lot of love there.

And different as they may be, they each have what the other needs in life. Jefferies may not like to admit how lonely he feels on the road and is amused by Lisa pampering him with dinners and visits, and Lisa finds both stability in the relationship (opting to spend a night eating in with him and keeping him company) and great pleasure from his adventurous mishaps. He’s a challenging man, and as her character reveals over time, she’s always up for a challenge. Her relationship with him breaks the mold of her very structured social lifestyle in New York. They’re polar opposites, and yet they fill the holes in each other’s lives.

Now imagine if he had been a real estate broker or a wealthy banker instead of a photographer. Or imagine she were a travel writer or a pilot instead of a socialite? They’d be as happy as clams, made custom for each other’s lifestyle, and they likely wouldn’t give a single thought about what’s happening outside their windows. Kind of dull, right? Instead, they’re pushed, confused, wounded, curious about what each other is thinking as well as how others around them live their lives…which leads to the murder mystery that unites Lisa and Jefferies for keeps. Their being opposites not only drives the plot, but their romance as well.

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We know that athletes, musicians, and actors all have to practice, rehearse, repeat things until it gets into the body, the 'muscle memory,' but for some reason, writers and visual artists think they have to be inspired before they make something, not suspecting the physical act of writing or drawing is what brings that inspiration about. Worrying about its worth and value to others before it exists can keep us immobilized forever. Any story we write or picture we make cannot demonstrate its worth until we write it or draw it. The answer can't come to us any other way.

Lynda Barry, SYLLABUS

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Many people ask for advice. And I love giving advice. But often I can tell they’re asking for the shortcut. What’s the way around all the work? And I don’t want to give shortcuts… It can make you feel stodgy, it can make you seem elitist in some way. And I don’t that’s the argument at all. In a way we’re all self-published. We’re all doing the work we can to get our stuff out there. But to me those ladders are there not to keep you away but to make you a better writer. And that’s what I always say: you owe yourself a lot of rejection letters, you owe yourself a lot of missed opportunities and failure. Because that’s how you’ll get good.

Jess Walter

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teach me how to comic

So you've just read a comic. Now perhaps you would like to comic, too. But maybe you are saying to yourself, "But I can't draw . . . " and then looking despondently at a stain on the floor.

Not to fear, little rabbit. Teaching Fellow Bob has come up with some online "comic generators." Here is his shortlist with little blurbs:

http://marvel.com/games/play/34/create_your_own_comic Pretty versatile, very geared for the capes and tights style stuff. Potential for longer applications though.

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/ pretty much a 3 panel limited option, but pretty easy to use

http://www.toondoo.com/ Very diverse opportunities, almost overwhelmingly so

http://stripgenerator.com/strip/create/ A little limited but easy to use

http://www.wittycomics.com/ Again, a little limited and pointed toward witty dialogue-driven stuff with 3 panel punchline

Go, try, screw around. Make the things.