The CaptainRaz Patented Guide to Writing More with Less Stress

A friend of mine was having a tough time with his writing and I offered to send him some advice, which he accepted. I've posted what I sent him here because it might be useful for others as well. And if nothing else it'll serve as a reminder to practice what I preach.

General advice: read Dean Wesley Smith's blog. Dude talks a lot of sense about how to write prolifically and how to have a sustainable career in writing. He may not have won a whole bunch of awards for his work, but he has been making a living from his writing for 40 years, both traditionally published and indie published. A lot of what I've been working on myself has come from his advice.

1) Carve out time to write.

How you do this is up to you and what works best for you. Do you work best with a set daily word count to aim for or will it be better to set aside an hour a day as writing time? Whichever works best for you, you need to get your butt in the writing chair on the regular. Preferably every day. Treat this time as sacred. Writing time is important time. Bite the heels of anyone who tries to disturb you during this time.

2) Don’t worry about creating capital a Art in your writing time.

The time you carve out for writing is important; what you write in your allotted time is not. Sometimes the pressure of creating something perfect is what makes us not create at all. Blank pages are terrifying when you sit down to create art. Work on changing your mindset; try to tell yourself you're not here to create an award winning piece of writing, you're here to have fun. Write what YOU want in your writing time. Don’t worry about awards or sales or edits or any of that. Just focus on having fun when you write. If it's not fun to sit down and write, why are you doing it?

3) Minimise distractions.

Distractions are the enemy, you must kill them with fire. Life throws a million and one things at us that we need to worry about: mortgages, the pile of dishes in the sink, sorting out doctor's appointments, feeding the cat and keeping track of who's winning whichever reality TV show is on at the moment. Worry about this outside your writing time. Writing time is for writing. I find it easier to concentrate on writing as my sole task if I stick some headphones and listen to music. There's a few things I listen to while writing but it is usually either really familiar so I don't have to concentrate on it or instrumental. Sometimes both. Isolating yourself with non-distracting music can really help and I do recommend headphones rather than speakers. In addition, I tend to write in minimalistic writing programs that lack all the whistles and bells of Word or its alternatives. My current favourite is FocusWriter (which is free) and allows near complete customisation. I tend to set it with a black background and green writing (like an old command line computer) and hide any spelling mistakes I make. Turn off the internet and hit full screen and write.

4) Writing sprints are your friend.

I have come to absolutely adore writing sprints. If I'm struggling to make myself sit down and write, a quick words sprint usually gets me going. The basic principle is this: set yourself a timer for 10, 20 or 30 minutes and write as much as you can in that time. Do not stop. Do not pass go. Do not go back to edit or spell check or any of that nonsense. Just keep putting one word after the other until the timer goes. THEN you can correct your horrible typos (which is sometimes hilarious) and inability to spell "field" despite having learned it age 6. You can go back and put in all the words you forgot existed (I did a sprint yesterday where I forgot the word "interim" so I typed in "interthingy", kept going and check afterwards). Momentum is they key with this. I didn't know until I tried sprinting that I can get down 1500-2000 words an hour when I get going. I try to stick to the lower end of that range for quality's sake, but 1500 words an hour is not to be sniffed at. That's how you start a career. Currently I like to use WriteOrDie for sprinting (which shouts at you if your keyboard is idle too long) but a kitchen timer and your writing program of choice work just as well. Word sprints are literally the only kind of sprinting I'm good at.

5) Track what you write.

I used to hate tracking how much I'd written on a particular day, but now I swear by it. Somewhere along the way I became the kind of person who loves spreadsheets for everything and everything, but especially for writing. Setting yourself a goal of 500 words a day? Then you need to know how often you're hitting that, how many days a week you’re missing, when you're exceeding that and what day's you work best on. Plus I find it really useful to try to keep streaks going. Earlier this week I managed five days in a row writing before missing a day due to illness. Still mad at myself for breaking the streak. A little bit of competition with yourself can be good, but don't beat yourself up too much if you miss a target. Pick yourself up and keep going. And track monthly totals. Hitting 15000 words in a month feels pretty good if you've been struggling.

6) Stop over editing.

I wanted to call this step "stop fucking around with your stories" but I felt that swearing in a header might be bad. I try to follow Heinlein's rule on this one that says "only rewrite to editorial order". I have a few people whose opinions I trust and I will make edits according to what they say but otherwise I try to leave my writing alone. It's easy to fall into the trap of editing something to death and never sending it out into the big wide world. It’s safer. Less chance of rejection. But at some point (especially if you ever want to make money from writing) you've got to trust that you know how to tell good story; you've got to let a piece stand on its own two feet and let go. It's hard at first, but you've got stop sabotaging yourself in the edit. Minimise editing and rewriting (especially for shorter pieces) and get them out there. Write better for the next one. Stop fucking around with it and get it out there.

7) Never stop learning.

If you think you know everything there is to know about writing then you're done. It’s over. Even your very favourite authors don't know everything there is to know about writing. Always try to be learning. Whether that's getting better with grammar and punctuation (how the fuck do semi-colons work anyway) or learning about the business side of things or working on better, more rounded characters, always strive for the next level. Try new things. Learn how stories work in different genre to your usual. Always be learning something.

8) Finish. Your. Shit.

OK, so I changed my mind about swearing in headings. This one is important though. Having a hundred half finished drafts is no fucking good to anyone, least of all you. This is the step I'm really working on myself, so I know how hard it can be sometimes. Soggy middles are soggy. new ideas are so shiny sometimes. I find I work best with a couple of things on the go at once, but once I have more than four works-in-progress I know I have to sit down and finish shit up. A crappy but finished story is better than something half done with sparkling prose. FINISH. YOUR. STORIES.

9) Deadlines are not your enemy.

This one helps with number 8. Bogged down with a particular story? Set yourself a deadline to finish it by. Maybe you'll be a few days late, but that doesn’t really matter. You sat your ass down and got shit done, and I'm willing to bet you finished it quicker than if you'd left the due date as something nebulous far in the future. I currently have self-imposed deadlines to try finish my WIPs before I attempt NaNoWriMo. Because the last thing I need when trying to write a novel in a month is other stories hanging over my head. Try it. Set yourself deadlines; try to stick to them.

10) Self care is important.

Be gentle and don’t push yourself too much. Take care of mental and physical health. IF you can't make yourself write today that's okay. If you can get something out when you're not at your best: GREAT! If you can't: don't worry, try again tomorrow. And don't expect too much when you're getting back on the writing wagon after a while off. It's not realistic to go from writing 0 words a day to 3000 words a day with no warm up. That’s a recipe for burnout. Always look after yourself first and the writing second.

Ten steps to try to make writing easier and more productive. Working on all of them at once might be daunting, so maybe pick one at a time. And if you want to boil it down to fewer rules? Try this:

Write everyday. Finish your shit. Trust in your ability to tell a good story.

And if you need more? I am a big fan of Heinlein's Rules, I'm going to put them here. Some of them are covered in steps 1-10 but they are worth repeating. These are the key to maintaining a writing career, but are eminently useful for increasing general writing productivity.

Heinlein's Rules

1) You must write. (Preferably every day.)

2) Finish what you start.

3) You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.

4) You must put your story on the market. (Entering into competitions or posting to your blog count here. Get it out into the world.)

5) You must keep it on the market until it has sold. (Keep it out there. Doesn't win the competition? Post it to your blog or self publish it. Get people reading your stuff)

Robert J. Sawyer's Bonus Rule

6) Start working on something else.

(One story is never enough. Finish one piece and immediately start on the next. Always be writing.)

For more stuff on Heinlein's rules see Robert J. Sawyer's website. Also worth googling is Lester Dent’s Master Plot Formula. It's specifically geared towards pulp fiction, but is a good template for enjoyable stories of other types as well.

Is there more writing advice out there in the world? Absolutely. In my quest to become a better writer (and eventually get paid to do it) I've come across no shortage of writing advice. This is just the stuff I've been working on personally. I just hope it'll be useful for others as well.

Happy Writing!

A Little Bit of Housekeeping

Judging by the stats for this blog I've either found a whole bunch of new readers or have suddenly become a lot more attractive to bots. I'm going to assume that you’re all actual people (or sentient robots, that's okay too) and act accordingly.

Hello! Welcome to my humble little blog.

Honestly this thing is a bit of a mess, since it collates every post from every blog I've ever owned right back to my teenage LiveJournal days. I like having it all in one place though so it stays up. I hope you enjoy reading about what an excruciatingly embarrassing knob eighteen year old me was.

(That said I have just hidden a bunch of posts that aggregated my tweets from 2009. No one wants to see that. And if for some reason you do, it's all there on Twitter anyway.)

The current focus of the blog is writing. Mostly me posting little bits of flash fic I've written, but occasionally I will write some advice that absolutely no one asked for. Sometimes I might do a bit of an update on how my life is going, but that's a lot less interesting than making shit up about fictional people.

So, welcome. Please do make yourselves at home; grab a cup of tea, put your feet up and I hope you enjoy the verbiage I string together.

#whimword - Glow

The screen crackled with static before fading to bright white light. Fifteen people held their breath expectantly. As the intensity of the glow diminished it became clear we were looking at the slow ballooning of a mushroom cloud.

The detonation had been successful.

Only then, when the screen confirmed our victory did I contemplate the enormity of what had just happened. This detonation was more than just the mushroom cloud and the bright flash of energy, it was also the deaths of a hundred thousand people and the poisoning of the land. Some would die quickly, the fortunate ones at least. Most would take months or even years. In decades, children who haven't even been born yet will feel the effects of our actions here today.

I sat down abruptly, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. What had we done? Surely nothing these people have done to us could possibly warrant this.

A week later they brought in a small group of survivors to monitor the progress of their radiation sickness. My superiors told me to investigate ways of speeding up the process. I refused. Our "subjects" were walking corpses and I had had a hand in that. I couldn't bring myself to look at them.

I quit the next day.

I should have left long before then, when I first realised what we were doing was wrong.

At first I wasn't sure what to do. I'd spent my whole life training with the academy of science, learning to turn scientific discovery into military superiority. I didn't know anything else.

Then I realised; I had a passable knowledge of anatomy and was a leading expert in radiation damage. Perhaps I could use this to undo some of what my research had done.

I found the nearest medical centre and they immediately accepted my offer of help. They were understaffed with too many critical patients and far too few resources; they were more than happy to accept an extra pair of willing hands.

At first I got given menial jobs only; cleaning up waste, carting patients around and folding laundry. I did what they asked but that kind of work always left me with too much time to think. And I chafed; I felt I could be more use elsewhere.

When a patient started crashing while I was transporting them I didn't hesitate, I went straight into medical mode. I  remember barking out orders to those around me and they were  followed. The patient didn't make it, but I'd done everything I could and shown how I could really help.

*

I'm still here, at the hospital. It's been years now, but the sick keep coming in. Because of me and what I've done. I've considered going back home, but the nightmares still haven't stopped. The guilt is still haunts me. I don't think it'll ever go away.

Anyway, I'm showing signs of radiation sickness myself; I'll probably be dead soon anyway. Feels to me like karma; I deserve nothing less.

#whimword - Locket

He said the locket would protect her. He never said from what.

She'd found it at a flea market in the bustling city of who-the-fuck-knows, in the middle of Fucking Nowhere. She wasn't sure what she had actually been looking for---herself or her true love or some bullshit---but it certainly hadn't been a battered old locket that didn't open.

Nevertheless, that was what she found. As soon as she saw it, she knew she had to have it.

The man at the stall seemed eager to get rid of it and sold it to her for peanuts. She put it around her neck and went on her way, barely giving the locket a second thought. The quest to find inner peace or some such nonsense was more important to her.

She didn't really notice the man brush past her in the crowd, gentle grazing her arm with a knife. When she read the newspapers later she realised she'd seen the man who'd killed five people in that market. She was lucky; she was spared. It rattled her.

Two days later, on a bus journey from who-the-fuck-knows to where-the-hell-is-this, she had another close call. They were attacked by a motorcycle gang on the road. Most of the passengers were killed; she survived by hiding under a seat. Later, when they were gone, she started walking towards the nearest town. She should have died from thirst or sunstroke, but somehow she made it.

The strange incidents kept piling up. She survived a car accident here, an armed robbery there. At first she put it down to unnatural good luck, but then she remembered the locket.

Every incident she'd survived she'd been wearing the locket. Maybe it really was some kind of protective talisman.

She decided to test it.

Skydiving, mountain climbing, shark diving. Every form of danger she put herself in she came out of unscathed. Emboldened, she even started sabotaging herself, cutting parachute chords and pissing off people who were better left alone.

She survived it all.

At some point she realised that while ever she was wearing that locket she literally couldn't die.

House fires, diving accidents, gunshot wounds. Over the years she survived them all. She daren't take the locket off. Without it she'd have died a hundred times over.

She wondered how far she could push it.

At a hundred and twenty five years old, after countless miraculous escapes and hundreds of ordinarily life threatening injuries, she finally tired. Everyone she knew and loved was dead. She'd had her time, escaped Death long enough. She wanted to choose her end, and greet Death like a friend.

She stood at the edge of the cliff, the wind blowing in her hair. She'd made up her mind. The locket came off for the first time in nearly a century. Without it she felt naked. She let it fall from her hand, no longer wanted or needed.

She stepped off the edge of the cliff.

This time, there was no miracle.

#whimword - Gate

She could have sworn the gate hadn't been there before. Lucy had been walking home this way for years and couldn't remember seeing it previously. Surely she would have noticed it if it had always been there?

A more important question was: where did it lead? Lucy imagined the gate was a portal to another realm, one filled with adventure and magical creatures, where good would always triumph over evil. She fantasized about leaving her well worn path between home and work and finding out where the gate led.

Maybe she'd find herself a hero of some sort. She could rescue a princess from a dragon, fall in love and marry her. Or maybe she'd slay a giant, find some long lost treasure. The possibilities seemed endless. All she had to do was step off the path, follow her heart and go through the gate to find out where it went.

She could shrug off her boring everyday life with the nine-to-five job and the pile of dirty dishes waiting for her at home. All she had to do was change her course, just a little.

Lucy sighed, shoved her hands in her pockets and continued the walk home. Maybe tomorrow.

***

#whimword is an informal flashfic competition run by @whimword on twitter.

Write Wordmonkey, Write!

Time marches ever on and as the due date for my thesis submission (not-so-affectionately known as T-day) approaches, my mind is starting to turn to what might come after. And as usual get closer and closer to not being a student any more, I've realised that I don't really want a proper grown up job; increasingly I want to make a living from my writing somehow and as a result I've been reading lots of advice about writing. Particularly advice about having a successful fiction writing career.

I'm quite fond of reading Chuck Wendig's writing advice, mostly due to his irreverent and (often sweary) style, but I've also been devouring books by Rachel Aaron, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith as well as listening to podcasts like Writing Excuses and I Should Be Writing. There's a hell of a lot of advice out there for a budding fiction writer, almost too much I've come to realise. It makes sense to a degree, the fiction publishing business is in flux and there are a lot of new things to learn about having a successful career in a world with lots of options for traditional, small press and self publishing.

But as far as advice on the actual writing part is concerned I sometimes feel that there's a lot of over-thinking going on. I mean yeah, who am i to be judging these professional writers on the advice they're giving? Surely they know what they're talking about more than I do? Well I might not be making any money from my writing and the only place I've been published is on my blog, but I like to think I know a thing or two about writing despite a pretty busy life. I mean, I've somehow managed to rack up a word count in the region of 60,000 words so far this year while I've been writing up my thesis. And those are just the words I've been keeping track of. And I've managed to do that by following three simple steps:

1) Make yourself sit down and write (preferably every day) with a few distractions as possible.
2) Keep track of how much you're writing and when.
3) When you finish one piece move on the next as quickly as possible. Always be writing.

Seems simple doesn't it? And it is really, but it is also incredibly difficult. Number one in particular is a real belly ache at times when there's work and cleaning and food to cook and videogames to play and a billion other things demanding your attention.

And then there's the beast called writer's block to consider. The best way I've found to beat writer's block is to just sit down and make yourself write something, anything. Whether that's a stream of consciousness whinge about the fact you can't think of anything to write, just make yourself sit there and tap out some words. More often than not it'll get the ball rolling.

I'm also a big fan of word sprints as a method of getting stuff onto the page. 15 minute chunks seem to work best for me, and I can get 500-600 words written in that time, which I don't is too shabby.

Point number two has helped me more than I thought it would. At the moment I'm tracking word count and the date, along with a monthly total and a daily average. You could even track where and what time of day you're writing, or divided it up into genre or fiction and non fiction. Whatever is most useful for you. The point is if you known the number of words you've committed to paper (or screen) you have something definitive, something tangible. And watching that number go up is incredibly satisfying. Had a relatively unproductive week or month? Push yourself to get a higher number next time. A little bit of competition with yourself never hurt, just remember to be kind to yourself if your number goes down one week. Life is allowed to get in the way sometimes, the trick is to pick yourself back up again and try again.

Which leads quite nicely to number three; start a new piece as soon as you can after finishing your current piece. It can be tempting to sit back and revel in the victory of having finished a story or poem or article, whether it's a 100 word drabble or an epic novel. Very tempting, but you have to get back on the house and keep going. Writers write. Yes there's editing and proofreading and a million other things to do, especially if you're submitting something for publication, but that shouldn't get in the way of writing something new.

Just finished writing a 40,000 word novella and suffering a little from writing fatigue? Write something short and sweet to change it up. Found something in your craft that needs work? Write a coupled of short pieces focussing on that aspect to practice. But you need to move on and start writing again, even before you edit something you just finished. Always. Be. Writing.

Three simple rules. Not that hard on the face of it, but they definitely require a little self discipline. That's up to you. Follow these steps and you should seen your productivity increase. Once you're writing on a regular basis you can worry about other stuff. But whatever happens keep writing. And if you need a few more rules I've found Heinlein's rules to be useful too. But keep it simple. Maybe set yourself a word count. 500 words a day is eminently doable, and kept up over the course of a year adds up to enough words for two novels. Wouldn't that be cool? That's what I'm aiming for.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have writing--I mean thesis to do.

Top 10 SF Stories by Women

Over on the old Twitters, @BellJarred for recommendation for short stories by women. As I've spent this year trying to read more scifi/fantasy (or speculative fiction if you're feeling all fancy) by women AND trying to read more short stories in general this lay within my general realm of expertise. I might have gotten a little bit excited and accidentally compiled a list of my current top ten short stories by women.  And because I have a blog doohicky and also to keep them all in one place, I'm posting the list here. Story time!

CaptainRaz's Current Top Ten SF Stories by Women (in no particular order)

Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster

This Nebula Award winning novelette by the sadly late Eugie Foster is difficult to describe.  It's about a future in which the masks we wear every day are literal and they change a person's lives and identity. No one is allowed to know who is really underneath the mask, though of course there are those who want to. This story is breathtaking and it's hard to put into words why I love it so much. It's the only story on my list I couldn't find on the web for free. It's only 99p though and well worth it. Just put it in your face holes.


Selkie Stories Are For Losers by Sofia Samatar

I listened to the audio version of this over on Escape Pod and loved it. It's a beautiful story that weaves folk tales with the modern day, and it kept me guessing right until the end. One of those where the SF elements are downplayed, but no less powerful for it. So far it's the only story I've read by Sofia Samatar, but I intend to change that.


Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette

I read this in The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (a number of the stories on this list are also in that) and it was one of my favourites in the anthology. A story about a living ship and her crew—which I always love—with a surprisingly Lovecraftian ending. I remember basically forcing my spousal unit to read this because I loved it so much.


Spider the Artist by Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor is a writer about who I've heard good things about but not read very much. This story though. This story. Zombies and robots and a woman trying to escape an abusive household. This story packs such a punch and somehow left me grinning despite the subject matter.


The Narcomancer by N.K. Jemisin

Oh man how much do I love N.K. Jemisin. Well, I devoured her Inheritance Trilogy (which weighs in at approximately 1500 pages) in about three days, utterly wrecking my sleep cycle resulting in me emotionally tweeting Susan at 3am. That's how much I love N.K. Jemisin. The Narcomancer is actually the first thing I read by her, and is a lead in to her Dreamblood duology, which I desperately want to read. Set in Gujaareh, where peace is the only law, we follow a priest tasked with bringing down the Narcomancer of the title (sleep wizard–I could use one of those) in order to save a village. Only there are complications (aren't there always). Read. It. And also the Inheritance trilogy as well.


Effigy Nights by Yoon Ha Lee

(See edit)

Yoon Ha Lee is another writer I've been flailing about a lot this year. I bought her his anthology, Conservation of Shadows, on the back of another short story (Combustion Hour) and this ended up being my favourite. Lee's strength is in the interplay of her his words; I just love the way she he puts them together. I can flail for hours over the second line in this story. The second line! The story is about books, and is haunting and moving. I don't want to say any more. Read this story, then Combustion Hour, then buy her his anthology. You won't regret it.


Astrophilia by Carrie Vaughn

Another entry from the Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women from the author of some of my favourite werewolf stories. No werewolves in this one though. Set after some cataclysm in which the human race has lost almost everything, this story is about one woman's search for knowledge and her struggle to fit in, with a little bit of romance as well.


The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu

This is one of those stories I wish I'd written. It is so, so good. Look at that title. Just look at it. Map-making wasps, bees rising up to overthrow their oppressors. Go. Read.


Goodnight Stars by Annie Bellet

This is an interesting one, having been caught up in the Hugos shenanigans this year (which I stayed the fuck away from thankfully), but I didn't hold that against it. From the middle book in John Joseph Adams' Apocalypse Triptych, this story is set smack bang in the middle of the end of the world. It's small scale, focussing in on a few people amid all the tragedy. It's a great story and made me want to get all three books in the triptych.


The God of Au by Ann Leckie

I am a massive fan of Leckie's Imperial Radch Trilogy, the first of which, Ancillary Justice, won literally all the awards. The second, Ancillary Sword, is even better and I am looking forward to the third even though it comes out about three days after my thesis is due in. 'The God of Au' is very different from the space opera setting of the Imperial Radch. Set mostly on the island of Au, this is a story about gods and promises and patience. It's the story that made me want to read Leckie's novels in the first place. I promise you this isn't the last on the list because it's less good than the others. It really isn't.


So there we go. Ten(ish) story recs, most of them free, and a few bonus novels to boot. Go, get thee to a book store (and also the internet, which I guess you're already on if–never mind.)

Have stories. Go read.



Edit: Since I wrote this post I found out that Yoon Ha Lee is in fact a trans man and not a woman. I'm electing to keep the entry up there because a) his stories are bloody amazing and I love them and b) there are also not enough SFF stories by trans folk that get showcased.

But so I am fulfilling my promise of having 10 SF stories by women here is one further recommendation:

The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal

This story won the Hugo for Best Novelette in 2014 and can see why. It's good. Very good. The story centres around an ageing astronaut longing for one last adventure. It's poignant and bitter sweet and made me cry my eyes out. You will not regret reading this, I promise.