The Completion Stage

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: Craft, focus, strategy, Uncategorized, writing advice, writing challenges, writing life

The past two weeks, I’ve talked about the stages we go through in our writing projects, including the challenges at each stage and ways to keep from derailing. After we have prepared the work-in-progress, let it germinate, worked on it, then deepened and shaped it, we are ready to complete the work.

“There is a completion stage,” Louise de Salvo says in Writing as a Way of Healing, “during which we again revise, revisit, rethink, and refashion. .. Often the drive to finish a work takes precedence over other needs and obligations—like being social or taking showers or eating well.” She said her sons used to call this her “demented stage” because she was so completely involved in her work.

Derail or Finish? That Is the Question

During the completion stage, you can derail your process several ways:

  • If you work needlessly, refusing to let go of your writing project and send it out into the world, your book can fail to be published out of fear. (The “world” can mean your critique partner, your agent, or an editor.) You know in your gut that you’ve made the book as good as you’re able at this point in your learning curve, and that continuing to work on the book is probably not helping it much. In fact, if you keep tinkering needlessly, you can do more harm than good.
  • If you lose interest in your work at this point, you may sadly end up putting the manuscript on a shelf in your closet “to work on later,” only later never comes. Instead of this solution, you must find ways to rekindle your original enthusiasm for your book. If you kept a work journal for this project, go back and read your original notes and hopes for this book.
  • If you become careless during this stage, you might not do the necessary polishing or changing that deep revisions call for. You might settle for a good manuscript or story, but not rise to the excellence you’re capable of at this point in your career. If you find yourself reading through your manuscript and being jolted by certain paragraphs or sentences—yet go on by, hoping no one else will notice the jerky rhythm or unclear sentence—then you’re becoming careless. This can derail your project.

It makes no sense to spend weeks, months, or years writing and then, when finishing, to produce a slovenly, careless effort. During the completion stage, you must fine tune what is there. You must pay attention to detail at this stage. It can be a “slow, meticulous, often plodding process,” says Ms. de Salvo. Yet it is necessary. “Finishing strong is something great athletes learn… Finishing strong is something writers also must learn.”

The Deepening and Shaping Stages

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: strategy, Uncategorized, writing life

In this series we’re discussing the seven specific stages you go through from beginning to end with a writing project. There is potential for both growth and failure at each stage.

(First read about the preparation stage, the germination stage, and the working stage.)

Deepening and Shaping

At the beginning of the deepening stage, you’ve already completed a rough draft. You may also have done some fixing on your draft, especially if you zipped through the rough draft at lightning speed, just getting it down as fast as you can. You may need to go back, fill in missing parts, rearrange some things.

If you’re a writer who writes a bit, then revises that bit before going on, your first finished draft was actually revised as you went along. Either way, it’s time to get down to some deeper work now. The deepening stage is more challenging, but very satisfying!

According to Louise de Salvo in Writing as a Way of Healing, in this deepening stage “we revisit, rethink, re-imagine, and revise what we’ve been doing. Often during this stage we learn what our project is really about, even if we’ve been working on it for years.” There is also a shaping stage, according this author, “during which we find the work’s order and form.”

Be Aware: Potential for Growth…and Failure

This is hard work, and these stages require a lot of deep thinking. During these stages, I tend to read books about deepening characters, or books on emotional structure and character arcs. I might study books on voice as I rethink various characters and how they’re coming across. There is potential for much growth during this period.

The dangers during the deepening and shaping stages have to do with maintaining our interest in the writing project. By now, we may be tired of the story, even sick of it, and the thought of going through the novel one or two or more times makes us want to run screaming into the woods.

If your enthusiasm diminishes, you must find ways to reignite it instead of abandoning the work. Read about the writing processes of other writers. You’ll see that you’re not alone by any means with the struggles of this stage. And give yourself credit–even celebrate–each new mini-completion you accomplish. It doesn’t feel like we’re making progress–we aren’t adding new pages now. However, each time you go through the manuscript and shape a bit here, cut a bit there, deepen that character’s motivation, enhance the outdoor scenery, or whatever you feel needs to be done–you are making progress. It is getting closer to the vision you had way back when you started the novel.

It’s a bit like the transition stage of having a baby–you’re sick of the whole process and would like to quit and go home–but you’re so close to holding the baby. Remember that with your book too. The deepening and shaping stages are bringing you ever closer to holding that finished book in your hands.

The Working Stage

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: organization, strategy, Uncategorized, writing advice, writing life

(Last week we started talking about the seven specific stages you go through from beginning to end with a writing project, and the potential for both growth and failure at each stage. First read about the preparation stage, then the germination stage.)

The Work-Out

Next we have the working stage, the one we’re probably most familiar with. During this phase we begin our rough draft, build on it, flesh it out, develop our plots and characters, and often fly by the seat of our pants to cross the finish line.

Sometimes we see our way clear through this phrase, especially if we are voracious outliners. If you hate outlines, this working stage may be more nebulous as you discover your story. You may get lost and have to start over a few times. But eventually you’ll have a rough draft, a completed draft with a beginning, middle, climax and end.

You might get the draft critiqued at this point, or you might revise your draft first, smoothing out rough spots, fleshing out the cardboard characters, and building the tension at the climax scene. The working stage is a longer stage, an exciting stage.

Danger! Danger! Warning! Warning!

What are the dangers during the working stage, the attitudes and behaviors that can derail our writing projects? There are many! Depending on your personality and favored way of working, you may do some of the following:

  • You may slavishly follow your outline instead of your instincts and creative impulses that encourage you to take detours.
  • You may derail during the working stage if you work zealously and with high anxiety. Working at a fever pitch, without taking time for relaxation, will cause burn-out and writer’s block just from exhaustion.
  • If you don’t learn to push through the confusion of this stage, you may abandon your project. All rough drafts and early revisions are confusing as you figure out what you’re really trying to say, where to put certain scenes and information, and what to do with the new characters and incidents that seem to spring full-blown from your unconscious mind.
  • If you are writing your rough draft with your Editorial Mind in gear, you will eventually give up. Editorial Mind is critical, which is an important trait later, but judging your work during your rough draft working stage can be lethal.
  • If you spend time thinking about the finished product (selling, publishing) when you’re trying to write, you won’t enjoy the process, and you’ll be very critical of everything you write. Instead, focus on enjoying the writing process and leave the “product” work until the last stage (the going-public stage).

“Sometimes,” author Louise de Salvo says in Writing as a Way of Healing, “writers mistakenly assume the work is finished when the working stage is over. But for us to do our finest, most authentic work, we must proceed further.”

We’ll discuss those deepening and shaping stages next.

Germination Phase

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: Creativity, organization, strategy, Uncategorized, writing advice, writing challenges

[Read about the first phase here: preparing to write.]

The second stage, called the germination stage by Louise De Salvo Ph.D. in Writing as a Way of Healing, is a time “during which we gather and work on fragments of ideas, images, phrases, scenes, moments, lines, possibilities for plots, characters, settings. Sometimes we don’t quite know what we’re doing or where all this is leading. Sometimes we feel like we’re working haphazardly. Sometimes, though, we have a clearer conception.”

Know Your Own Personality

During the germination stage, my Type A personality wants to organize, and yet so much of what occurs to us during this time isn’t “organizable” yet. I used to follow advice I’d read to write down ideas on scraps of paper and stick them in a folder, but I soon found that my own personality hated that. I would open the file folder, see all those scribbled scraps on paper napkins and file cards and the backs of receipts—and it looked like chaos.

Chaos of any kind has never been conducive to writing for me. And yet, if you push yourself to organize during the germination phase, you are almost sure to derail any creative impulses trying to emerge.

Tips for a Successful Germination Phase

So is there a solution to getting through this phase and gleaning from it everything you need to start working on your novel or project? I suspect this is an individual matter, but for me, this is what works to keep me from derailing during this phrase:

1. Follow your urges to read. They will come at such odd moments. You’ll be sorting through junk mail or paying bills, and suddenly you see a flyer on how to save on your water bill. Although ninety-nine percent of the time you pitch this junk unread, today you feel the nudge to read it. Pay attention to your urges to read. I have thus found careers for certain characters, plot twists and whole subplots, and clues for mysteries. The germination stage is a wonderful time to browse in museums, art galleries, antique shops, flea markets, and other places where you can let your mind and eyes roam. Watch what snags your attention and make note of it.

2. If you feel you must organize (like I do), get a three-ring notebook and those colored divider tabs. (This method has served me well through forty-seven books.) Make sections for book and chapter titles, character, plot ideas, setting, dialogue, and whatever else you’re collecting. Continue to write things on scraps of paper as they come to you, but after you have several scraps, sit down with your notebook and add the information behind the correct colored tab. (Scotch taping the scrap to a page is quick and easy.) Is it a snippet of dialogue you overheard on the bus that is just perfect? Transfer it to the dialogue section. Did you find an odd fact about 1940s mail carriers? Put it in the character section. Is it a bizarre thing that someone did that you saw in the newspaper? Add it to the plot section. None of this is written down in any order, but as your sections fatten with ideas, your mind will (quite unconsciously) start to sort it out and make connections. In a later stage, when you go through the various sections of notes, you’ll be amazed at the ideas that will have begun to gel. (That’s in the working stage, which we’ll talk about next.)

The germination stage can be such an exciting, fun time, but it comes with some frustrations. Look at the purpose of this stage, then balance it against your own personality and way of working. After some time–and it’s different for every person and every project–you’ll be ready to move on to the next stage.

[By the way, I’m skimming the surface of the material in De Salvo’s book. If this rings true for you, I’d encourage you to get her book.]

Preparing to Write

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: Uncategorized, writing, writing life

In Writing as a Way of Healing, author Louise De Salvo, Ph.D. delineates seven different stages of the creative process—and warns how we can derail our entire writing process with certain behaviors at each stage.

“For our writing to be healing,” Louise says, “it’s important for us to understand that there are different stages of the writing process, and different challenges at each stage.” It’s important to be able to write in a healing way, without undue anxiety. “I’ve come to understand,” Louise says, “that the most healing way of approaching the writing process is to focus upon the potential and possibilities for growth rather than upon its problems and pitfalls.”

Predictable Stages with Predictable Problems

Ms. De Salvo talks about seven predictable stages we pass through with each creative project. While sometimes stages can overlap, they are distinct stages with separate challenges—and they hold different opportunities for us to grow as writers.

The seven stages are:

  • the preparation stage
  • the germination stage
  • the working stage
  • the deepening stage
  • the shaping stage
  • the completion stage
  • the going-public stage

The preparation stage (the subject of today’s blog) comes first. This is when puzzling ideas and odd images and snippets of conversation drift in and out of our dreams and musings. We wonder what they mean, and we’re intrigued. At some point we stop musing and begin to put things down on paper, trying to organize our thoughts, figuring out what genre or literary form we want to use and possible viewpoints. “Beginning writers,” says de Salvo, “often spend far too little or far too much time at this stage; some avoid it altogether and plunge right into working, which can derail our process.”

Sabotage at Stage One

How do writers sabotage themselves during the preparation stage? Several ways. One big way is by not writing down those fleeting thoughts we have at odd times. It’s not so much that we think we’ll remember those thoughts later. It’s more because the thought seemed rather silly, certainly insubstantial. We decide at some level that the idea just isn’t big enough to warrant attention—and so it’s lost.

On the other hand, you may take this initial stage so seriously that you shut down. You may expect too much of yourself, thinking that if you were a “real writer,” you’d have a plan! You’d know where all these odd bits and pieces floating around your head belong. You expect the images and musings to fit into a pattern much too soon, and this kind of pressure can give you a lovely writer’s block before you ever get started.

Tips for Stage One

In this preparation stage, in order to get the most out of it, give yourself permission to think and make note of trivial thoughts. Write down everything, no matter how unconnected it might seem to anything you want to write. Eventually, these odd bits and pieces may start making connections and spark other ideas that will be more useful or substantial.

Learn to enjoy this stage! Force yourself, if you’re a Type A organizational freak like me, to let your brain slowly release ideas to you. Don’t force connections immediately. Don’t try to make each snippet “mean something.” Let it happen for a while. For quite a while, actually. Remember, you’re just in the preparation stage.

Blog posts during the next two weeks will cover the remaining stages of the writing process, both the setbacks and the tips for navigating that stage successfully!

Celebrating Freedom….for Writers

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: focus, habits, Uncategorized, writing advice, writing challenges

Sometimes, in order find freedom, you have to take the exit pointed out for you.

Last week was one of those weeks.

And at the end of this post, I’ll share with you a very easy path to the freedom to focus.

Losing Focus

I had reached the middle of a novel, one thoroughly plotted out, mind you, but when I actually analyzed it scene by scene, the plot was quite thin. It needed a subplot to beef up the middle, but it couldn’t be any old subplot. It’s a mystery, so it had to tie in with the main story PLUS add important clues and intrigue. Once added, it also meant going through the whole novel and seeing how the subplot would change all kinds of things.

My solution? Acorn TV! I love British TV, and for $4.99 a month, you can watch all the classics you want. But did it help me plot the sagging middle of my novel? No.

So I stopped watching TV, tried to think of a subplot, and went to check email, then post photos of outings with my grandkids on Facebook, and check the local weather station (even though I didn’t plan to go anywhere.) When I am having trouble with my writing, the Internet is my all-time biggest time waster.

A Semi-Solution Is Not Freedom

The day I had the most trouble, I packed up and went to the library study room where I can’t get their free Internet, for some reason. I got quite a lot done, but someone there was playing video games. It surely left him half deaf because I could hear it perfectly despite his ear buds. And it was so cold in there! I’d forgotten to bring a jacket, a must for anywhere indoors in Texas during the summer months.

I prefer working at home in my office, but I will do what I have to do to concentrate. Today I had the same focusing problem, but I couldn’t leave home this time. We had city inspectors coming to make sure the new doors and windows had been installed properly. And of course, the very busy inspector didn’t come till the end of the day. Did I get any writing done?

YES! A lot! And here’s how.

Best Kind of Freedom

I remembered some software I’d bought a few years ago for a whopping $10 called FREEDOM. It simply blocks the Internet for as long as you choose. I blocked it four hours this morning and could focus so easily then! After lunch and checking email, I blocked it for another three hours and wrote. I haven’t had such a productive day in a long time. When you stop interrupting your own thought processes with tiny snippets of information online, you can actually stick with a writing problem long enough to solve it.

Check it out. The Freedom software is still the same low price; it works on Windows and Mac computers, plus other devices.

Want to restore your freedom to focus? Check it out! (It even comes with an unconditional 60-day money back guarantee.) You can’t go wrong.

Inspired by WD-40

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: Uncategorized

In 1953 a fledgling business called Rocket Chemical Company set out to create a rust-prevention solvent for use in the aerospace industry. It took them 40 attempts to get the formula right.

Voila! WD-40, which stands for Water Displacement, 40th attempt.

I find that inspiring! What if they’d given up on number 39? Then I wouldn’t have my favorite solution for unsticking locks and making my sliding glass doors actually slide.

WD-40 Your Manuscripts

No, don’t spray the greasy mist on your manuscript. But do take the WD-40 as your slogan. Don’t stop revising and submitting until you also have tried many, many times!

In order to spur myself on to submit several book manuscripts that I had “retired” after just two rejections, I was reading in Ralph Keyes’ The Writer’s Book of Hope. I was encouraged by some very famous “WD-40” kinds of authors who would have remained nameless if they’d given up so early.

  • Despite being represented by a top literary agent and being read by prominent editors, John Knowles’s A Separate Peace was rejected by every major American publisher who saw it. (It was published in London.)
  • Other famous books that went through multiple rejects include: Look Homeward, Angel; Love Story; A Wrinkle in Time; All Things Bright and Beautiful and many other novels that became classics and continue to sell decades later.
  • Twenty major publishers thought Chicken Soup for the Soul had no commercial prospects, despite the authors being experienced speakers and aggressive marketers.
  • Stephen King’s first four novels and sixty short stories were rejected.

Having your work turned down is no fun, and I won’t sing the praises of being rejected. I hate it too. But we must come to terms with it, accept it as part of the writing life, accept criticism if it has merit, and get on with it.

A Necessary Part

As Keyes puts it, “To working writers, rejection is like stings to a beekeeper: a painful but necessary part of their vocation.”

And now…in the spirit of the inventers of WD-40, I’m getting back to my umpteenth revision.

For Writers Needing Some Fun, Try the Unschedule

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: getting started, goals, procrastination, strategy, Uncategorized

I have a tight deadline, and I’m tired of working.

I could also use some fun in my life.

Can I have both? Yes!

Back to What Works!

Last year I tried the “Unschedule,” a technique for breaking through procrastination found in The Now Habit, a book by Neil Fiore. According to my notes in the book, the four days that I used Fiore’s “unschedule” turned out to be some of the most productive I’d had in a while. The one day I disregarded it (thinking I really don’t have time for these breaks–too much to do) I actually got less work accomplished!

This coming week is very full with writing deadlines and family events. Yet I feel so antsy. I want to do almost anything but sit here and write. But if I simply procrastinate, I’ll get precious little done and not even enjoy the time  off.

So…I filled out my Unschedule this morning before starting this blog.

What in heaven’s name is an Unschedule?

Hooked on Play

A clue is on the cover of the book. The full title of Fiore’s book includes the subtitle: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. An unschedule is a way that incorporates play and leisure FIRST in your schedule. Yes, you actually put FUN on your schedule before your chores are listed. Each immediate and frequent reward follows a short (30-minute) period of work. (This is instead of delaying a reward until the whole project is done.)

For example, I have six scenes to outline today. Always in the past, I did the six scenes (about 4-6 hours) non-stop, then crashed with a bad neck ache and headache. Today I’ve scheduled it one scene at a time with rewards scheduled after each scene. I also have a phone call with a friend this afternoon on the schedule.

Why Fun First?

Fiore’s book is about overcoming–even preventing–procrastination.

“By starting with the scheduling of recreation, leisure, and quality time with friends,” Fiore says, “the Unschedule avoids one of the traps of typical programs for overcoming procrastination that begin with the scheduling of work–thereby generating an immediate image of a life devoid of fun and freedom. Instead, the Unschedule reverses this process, beginning with an image of play and guarantee of your leisure time.”

By the way, before scheduling the fun times, block out the chunks already committed elsewhere–taking kids to summer swimming lessons, a class you teach, dental appointments, lunch, commuting places, etc. It will encourage you to get started a bit quicker when you see how much free time you ACTUALLY have for your writing.

Tiny Work Loads

The other recommendation for the Unschedule is to keep work periods to thirty minutes. Thirty UNinterrupted minutes. Thirty minutes of work–use a timer to be sure–and it can’t include anything like checking email on a whim, or returning a phone call, or other distractions we procrastinators are famous for.

After your thirty minutes is up, you record the actual work done on your daily schedule somewhere, and then freely enjoy your reward. Believe it or not, those half hours add up by the end of the day. Fiore says, “Thirty minutes reduces work to small, manageable, rewardable chunks that lessen the likelihood that you will feel over-whelmed by the complexity and length of large or menacing projects.” And thirty minutes of concentrated work can mean a lot of pages piling up.

Time for me to go! I’m twenty-eight minutes into this blog, and I hoped to finish in thirty instead of my usual plodding hour-long pace. Guess what comes next? I plan to read a chapter in a new mystery set in England, my favorite kind of fun reading. 

How Fit is Your Writing Life?

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: habits, Uncategorized

Ever have a pig-out weekend with a wake-up call on Monday morning? I did yesterday. After reading a few motivational articles online for getting myself back on track, it struck me that getting fit and getting published have a lot in common.

The Writing-Fitness Team

The problems that derail our writing goals and our fitness goals (and the solutions proposed by the “experts”) can almost be interchanged!

  • For example, if you want to lose weight and get in shape, fitness experts say that a support system of some kind is necessary. (Writers need it too.)
  • Interval training is recommended for fitness–short bursts of focused work, then lighter periods for recovery. (This works best for my writing schedule as well.)
  • Fitness experts recommend keeping track of your calories consumed and miles run. (Writers recommend keeping track of words and pages written.)
  • Certainly to succeed in both areas, you need daily disciplines (consistency).
  • And in both arenas, “slow and steady wins the race,” rather than days of self-torture followed by taking several weeks off.
  • Both fitness experts and published writers recommend journaling, both for dealing with emotional issues that can throw you off your goals, as well as “before-during-after” journals for dealing with special blocks and temptations.
  • Fitness gurus tell you how to deal with those loved ones who (perhaps unconsciously) try to sabotage your weight-loss progress. I’ve written about that issue myself, pertaining to writing.
  • Fitness experts talk about the changes you need to make daily, and how you must think of them as “lifestyle changes” if you want to be successful. (Writers, also, must make changes in lifestyle that need to be permanent instead of lasting only until a deadline is met.)
  • Diet instructors caution against using your calories on junk food and feeding the body little nutritional value. (As a writer, we need a variety of “nutrient dense” reading, not just fluff.)
  • To be successful in either endeavor, you need to stop those negative, defeatist thoughts and be optimistic.
  • There are also times to deal with where you do everything right but get disappointing results (follow your food plan and exercise daily, yet gain a pound–OR write daily and submit, yet get rejected.)

I realized today that if I can master these general habits and mindsets, I can conquer all my fitness issues AND my writing issues! How do I plan to do that? My tried-and-true mini habits.