Cameron Montague Taylor

Fantasy Author & Fiction Editor

Cameron Montague Taylor

Worldbuilder’s Disease: Writer’s Block

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Welcome to my series on worldbuilder’s disease: a Sci-Fi/Fantasy problem in which aspiring writers end up with notebooks full of history/backstory, but no drafted words on the page. This is the third post in the series – click to check out the first and second posts.

Last week, I wrote about draft-blocked and plot-blocked processes and how to overcome them to get a draft out. This week, we’ll look at strategies for overcoming revision-related blocks. While revision-blocked writing isn’t unique to the SFF landscape, it can certainly come as a result of worldbuilder’s disease, so I’ve included it in this series.

Revision-blocked writers come in two different flavors:

  1. The structure-blocked writer, and
  2. The perfection-blocked writer.

Structure-blocked writers

Structure-blocked writers start their projects with boundless enthusiasm, churn through the first several chapters of their manuscript, then abruptly lose interest (or: find it impossible to continue).

A close cousin of the plot-blocked writer, many structure-blocked writers don’t know where to go with their story after the opening chapters – or find everything between the opening and the ending too boring to write.

SB writers tend to either 1) abandon their project in favor of a shiny new WIP (work-in-progress), or return to the beginning and fuss, fuss, fuss with their initial chapters.

I like to think of SB writers as folks who have a partially-assembled piece of Ikea furniture sitting in the corner of their living room. A bag of all the spare bits and pieces they couldn’t figure out how to fit into the furniture – let’s call it a bookshelf – sit in a bag on top.

How do we go from a structural disaster to an immaculate Kallax unit?

By reading the directions. Or, to zoom out of this weird furniture metaphor and apply it to our writing: by having a roadmap.

Structure-blocked writers often start writing with an idea for the beginning, an end, and an empty wasteland of a middle. This is a plot-structure problem. In order to fix it, we need a roadmap.

You may say, “But Cee, I hate plotting!”

That’s fine! Remember, plotterßàpantser is a wide spectrum. Plotting work =/= scene level outlines if you don’t want it to.

If you’re a structure-blocked writer who needs to find a workable way to build a scaffold for the sagging middle of your novel, here are two different techniques to try. Each involves a different level of pre-plotting intensity to help you get past the black hole that opens up the moment you draft chapter four.

  • Low-intensity plotting: flashlight/waypost method

If plotting sucks the life out of you, try the flashlight/waypost method (aka Plotting Lite).

The flashlight method = working towards the end.

Working towards the end means taking a look at the current drafted chapters and asking ‘ok, given what I’ve already got on the page, what interesting thing can I make happen next?’

Or, as some authors put it, “how can I leave the most blood on the floor?”

When you’re stuck and all of the options you come up with seem boring, that’s when you want to wreck your character’s life. Throw them an unhittable curve ball. Burn down their house. (Sometimes literally.)

‘Boring’ comes from a dearth of compelling conflict – so create some. Think of an event (a breakup, a death, a horrible loss) that will propel the character forward and give them something to fight for/against/toward.

It may yet be unclear how that conflict will fit into the greater narrative, but hey, that’s why flashlight-method writers are often called “discovery” writers.

You’ll think of something.

And even if it winds up being the wrong turn, or a scene you need to tweak for it to sit right – it got you writing, didn’t it? You can fix wrong turns. You can’t fix a blank page.

The waypost method = working towards the middle.

Working towards the middle is the same concept, but turned on its head. Instead of putting blood on the floor right away, you try to find the mid-point between the last chapter you have drafted and the next major event set in stone in your book.

This might very well be the climax/ending. If that’s the case, you want to focus on the midpoint.

(Side-note: I absolutely swear by the midpoint as one of the most, if not *the* most, important parts of a book. If you dread the middle, try to think of it as an opportunity instead of a chore.)

What huge event happens halfway through your novel? The midpoint clarifies and raises the stakes, changes the game for the protagonist, and adds a plot twist to show the protagonist the true nature of the enemy they’re facing.

What kind of event would do that?

Once you have that event, cut the story in half again – go between the last chapter you wrote and the midpoint. What has to happen halfway between those two points to get the characters to the Midpoint Event?

Then cut it in half again, and again, and again – until you have a roadmap of how to get yourself to the halfway mark. These are your major plot points. Instead of writing into a sagging, soggy void, you can write your way from waypost to waypost, adding more as necessary whenever you come upon a big blank chunk of time.

To summarize:

Pros: flashlight/waypost will get you writing! It’s better for pantsers and plantsers who find the will to write sucked out of them when adhering to a strict plotting structure. Best for those who enjoy the editing and revisions process, because…

Cons: The end result could need a lot of revision.

Caveats: It’s still possible to get stuck! In that case, it’s safe to assume the story has taken a wrong turn somewhere. This could require zooming out and looking at the story structure with a plotting, revisionist eye to spot what’s tripping up the plot.

  • High intensity plotting: aka using beat sheets and story structure

If you’re a plotter (or if you’ve tried pantsing, but it doesn’t work for you), the best way to unstick yourself is to have a roadmap. In other words, you need to dust off the instructions that came with your Kallax unit and use them for assembly.

Many writers operate under the misconception that story structure – and adhering to it – will leave you with a cookie-cutter story that’s ‘been done’ before. That’s not true! Creative problem-solving can always lead you to an original, fresh take. The secret to writing with a structure is to use each ‘beat’ in the structure as an opportunity to put a twist into your story.

There are many different kinds of story structure, but I use (and recommend) three-act as a fantastic jumping-off point.

Earlier in my writing journey, I came across a breakdown of three-act by Paranormal Romance author Jami Gold. I don’t write ParaRo, but her blog (and description of structure) helped immeasurably when I was slogging through early drafts of my first books. She also offers downloadable beat sheets that you can use to workshop your books.

If you’re interested in a detailed dig into three-act, though, I cannot recommend Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody enough. STC is a cornerstone of how I conceptualize story structure. Although it’s not the only resource I use to plot my work, Brody’s book helps me create the scaffold for everything I write.

I’m a self-identified plotter, so I do all of my scaffolding as pre-work before I get writing. That said, books are wild things, and tend to go off-script on us. When that happens, I often end up running my current draft back through beat sheets (or STC exercises and worksheets) to diagnose my story structure problems.

Beat sheets (and a familiarity with story structure in general) can help you reverse-engineer almost anything: a character arc, a relationship arc, an external plot, a climax sequence, a solid midpoint. Most importantly, it can help you figure out why you have pacing issues (huge for me!), or even (!!!) why you’re struggling to get past chapter four.

Story-structure is a big-picture, front-loaded cousin of the flashlight/waypost method. It will help you pinpoint each place a Major Event must occur within your writing, and guide you as you work out what the best event could be to keep your story moving in the direction you want.

Early in my writing life, I used to get blocked four to six chapters in all the time. I was a structure-blocked writer: I pushed through the conflict and worldbuilding exposition in the first chapters, then stared at the yawning void between there and the climax with no idea how to make it through. Three-act structure helped me map the space between the beginning and the end, creating interesting conflict, twists, and turns along the way.

As soon as I knew where those twists and turns were, the fire to write always reignited for me. Suddenly, instead of having to find a way to get through 50k to reach the climax, I only needed to write 2k to get to the next major plot event – and the way was so much clearer.

So… what if you’ve picked a method (plotting, pantsing) that works for you, hammered out a structure… and still can’t get past those first few chapters?

You might be a perfection-blocked writer.

Perfection-blocked writers

A close cousin to the draft-blocked writer, perfection-blocked writers may have made it out of the draft-blocked stage only to get hung up four or five chapters in. Why? Although perfection-blocked writers are super excited to write their story (and know exactly what they want to put down on paper!), they can’t get past their perception of the quality of their early chapters.

In other words: they think their first chapters suck, and it prevents them from moving past the beginning to continue the draft.

Instead of writing their way to the middle and end they’re so excited about, perfection-blocked writers will redraft, and redraft, and redraft the beginning. They feel that they can’t move past the beginning until it’s perfect. Of course, once they reach the end of the beginning, something else is wrong with it – or perhaps they draft chapter six only to realize it creates a plot hole in chapter two.

Back they go to fix it, never making it to chapter seven, never reaching the end.

Many of the perfection-blocked writers I know are parts of writing groups or critique circles. They send the same chapter (or series of chapters) in over and over, returning to the drawing board with their feedback to redraft instead of moving forward.

Here’s the problem, though:

It’s impossible to know what the perfect beginning is until you’ve written the end.

We can hazard good guesses at it based on our story structure, of course, but even our esteemed critique partners might give feedback that misses the mark because they’re looking only at one chapter and not at a complete story.

No matter how stringent a plotter you are, the story will change between chapter one and The End by the time you get there, often necessitating a different first chapter.

Think of those early chapters as placeholders – your best guess at what groundwork you need to lay for the rest of the book to stand upright. It’s normal to need more foundation work after laying the roof. That may seem counter-intuitive (we never build houses on broken foundations!), but it’s a fundamental truth that’s worth swallowing about writing fiction, otherwise you’ll never build anything but a foundation.

All that said, perfection-blocks can battle with our logical understanding of story structure, compelling us to keep rewriting our beginning.

Here are a few tools that can help you manage your inner perfectionist while holding you back from redrafting the beginning ad infinitum.

  • Find a way to organize and structure the critique you’re receiving.

This could be critique you’ve given yourself (sudden realizations! Changes in the plot! Lightning bolts of inspiration!) or crit from others. Either way, part of the compulsion to go back and edit the beginning comes from suddenly knowing what to fix and being afraid to forget how to fix it.

Different writers organize and retain this information in different ways. You could use a writing notebook with separate sheets of paper for each scene, listing changes by hand. (I recommend disc binders for this – they’re my personal favorite – but any system that functions for you will do.)

You could use an excel spreadsheet that helps track scenes, chapters, arcs, characters, or any number of data points through time, letting you take notes on how those aspects of your book develop (and what needs to change when you enter revisions).

You could copy your draft into an entirely new document – one only meant for future edits – and compile inline comments from crit buddies (or your own critical brain!) for later review.

The most important thing is to have your information and ideas safe, organized, and ready for when it’s time to start that draft. That way, you don’t feel the need to hold every single scrap of revisions information in your head while you’re writing.

  • Find a different writing group.

If you’re receiving critique on early chapters that jumpstarts your perfectionist brain and makes it impossible not to go back and make changes… you may need to reconsider membership in your writer’s group.

I know several amazing, successful writers who absolutely cannot show early chapters to anyone – who won’t show anything but a full first draft to their alpha and beta readers. Why? Because as soon as they receive crit, or explain later events of the story to critters in order to facilitate crit, they lose all motivation to complete the draft.

Critique and writer’s support groups are amazing ways to build connections and make friends, but don’t feel obligated to get your early chapters critiqued before you’ve gotten to a comfortable place in your work. Some writers can take crit on half-baked books. Others can’t – and that’s okay! Figure out where you fall on that spectrum and take the necessary steps to protect yourself and your work.

There are writer’s communities based on socialization, craft chat, and support, too – not just critique exchanges. Plenty have popped up on discord that are searchable through social media sites like twitter or tumblr. NaNoWriMo also has a forums section that gets busy in April, July, and November, but has activity all year round.

  • Ignore the processes of writers who don’t have this problem.

I’m not (and never have been) a perfection-blocked writer. If you ever see me post about my drafting and editing process… ignore me.

Writing advice is never one-size-fits-all – hence the myriad debates in the writersphere about The Definitive Way to Write Things (a debate I’d love to see die one day, but alas, I suspect that day isn’t forthcoming). Among those debates: whether or not a writer should go back and make changes to the manuscript during draft one.

There are many writers (myself included) who hit a particular milestone in their story structure (usually the midpoint or somewhere just past it) and go back to clean up the plot, foreshadowing, and character motivations/arcs in the first half of the book.

Do not let yourself get drawn in by their methods. These writers aren’t perfection-blocked writers. They don’t have the same temptation to rework, and rework, and rework those early chapters. Their methods will not work for you until you’ve broken your blocked habits and completed at least one (possibly several) manuscript drafts.

Scrutinize where your writing advice comes from (this blog included). Not every successful writer’s process will work for you. And certainly, beware of the temptation to use advice from non-perfection-blocked writers to justify continued tweaking.

Could this tweaking become a part of your process in the future? Perhaps. For now, however, it’s time to break a habit and get a draft on the page.

Up next week: craft and worldbuilder’s disease

Come join me next week for part four of my series on worldbuilder’s disease. I’ll break down the common problems worldbuilders run into when translating their worlds into draft form: exposition, info-dumping, and backwards causal chains between setting and character.

As always, if you’re enjoying the content, please consider liking this post or dropping your e-mail in the subscribe box in the side bar so you don’t miss an update.

Morning Pages: Blackberries

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Welcome to Morning Pages — it’s time for a monthly roundup. I hope you’ve got your pencils sharpened and ready to write. Wanna join in on the fun? Read the prompt, set your timer* and get ready to let the words flow. Feel free to post the results of your work in the comments below where we chat about writing and (if the mood strikes us) get a craft discussion going.

If you want critique from other commenters, use #YESTHANKS in your comment. Otherwise, you can tell us about the flash fic and the process you went through to write it. And of course, I’m always open to hear what you think about my excerpts!

*you can write for as long as you want, but most folks choose 15-30 minutes.

Things I learned this month: Being a dyed-in-the-wool perfectionist who struggles when things don’t go right the first time is a *trip* when one is also a writer.

I think perfectionists come in two breeds: procrastinators and tinkerers. I’m the first breed. If something isn’t going well, or if I’m concerned it won’t go well on the first try, I’ll put it off until time ends and the oceans run dry. While it goes without saying that this is a self-destructive habit, it’s also a helluva tough one to try to break. The only ‘hack’ that helps is a hard and fast deadline.

Over time, I’ve gotten better at honoring the deadlines I set for myself the same way I honor external time pressure, but some days it’s more of a struggle than others. I had a lot of those days throughout the past month, none worse than the day I wrote the piece of flash fiction this post is named after. If it weren’t for a very real deadline (I had to write another flash fic the next day!) it’d still sit unfinished on my hard drive.

I could beat myself up about this tendency, I suppose, but I don’t think it’d get me anywhere. Throughout the time I’ve spent as a writer, I’ve had to come to grips with all of my little idiosyncrasies. If needing to game myself into finishing work is one of them, so be it — better to accept this is the way I am and work with it than to fight against my nature.

And ultimately, that’s what a writing process is, isn’t it? Finding a way to produce good work within the boundaries of one’s nature.

The Prompts:

“Your new ring likes to give you questionable advice that only you can hear.”

Mostly about the stock market.

“There was madness in her bloodline.”

Which doesn’t bode well for her subjects.

“Shatter”

What if a heart really could break like glass?

“Secret + Autumn + Ice”

Neveshir from Dark Arm of the Maker visits the shrine of an old friend.

“A rare flower is required to cure a plague. It is deadly if handled carelessly.”

“Deadly Flower“: A brave knight saves her kingdom — but at what price?

“Secret”

A young bride learns something most welcome about her new husband.

“In three days, a planetary alignment will cause the barriers between the planes to become thin.”

Grief doesn’t get lighter; we grow strong enough to carry it.

“Bone + Copper + Vulture”

“Bones“: Beware the mirages in the drylands. They will lead you astray.

“You should not underestimate her. She has exquisite aim.”

An Oceana ‘verse from long after the story ends. Imran’s daughter knows what she’s doing.

“Star + Ink + Rescue”

“Shipbreaker“: A rescue swimmer encounters a man who isn’t worth saving.

“Sin”

I’ve always wanted to write a Zorro-inspired Fantasy.

“Now that you see what I am, do you still love me?”

What if Cinderella’s stepsisters weren’t the monstrous ones?

“Protector + Veil”

When the King has triplets, two become protectors and one becomes a queen.

Picture Prompts

“Don’t Look“: Sirens prey on sailors who acknowledge the beauty of their voices.

A black and white photograph of a nude young man fading into the mist where a grassy field meets a forest.

“Blackberries“: A man remembers a lover from long ago.

“Merfolk“: Arden from the Oceana ‘verse tells a story about a long-forgotten creature.

Get Involved!

Answer the prompts or dive straight in and respond to others’ comments — let’s share our knowledge, our experience, and have a discussion we can all learn from! Don’t want to miss a post? Subscribe to the blog in the sidebar to get notified about new posts.

Questions

  • Do you write well under deadlines?
  • Why or why not?

Worldbuilder’s Disease: Getting Started

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In my first post on worldbuilding, I talked about worldbuilder’s disease: what it is, and why it keeps SFF writers from getting their stories onto the paper. This week, we’ll look at strategies for overcoming worldbuilder’s disease and getting started on our manuscripts.

Help! I’ve built a massive world and have no idea where to start

A missing starting point comes from one of three issues. Either:

  1. We’re draft blocked: we know what story we want to tell, but have no idea how to write chapter one, or
  2. We’re plot blocked: we have 10,000 years of global history and don’t know how to focus on a book-sized idea, or
  3. We’re revision blocked: we know the story, we know where to start, we’ve started writing… but we can’t get past the beginning (one of two reasons: structure or perfectionism.

While 1) and 3) aren’t problems exclusive to worldbuilder’s disease, they crop up often enough I think they’re worth including in the greater discussion. Even if you’ve never struggled with worldbuilder’s disease, you may see yourself in these problems/solutions.

This week, I’ll explore tips for draft-blocked and plot-blocked writers.

Draft-blocked writers

Draft-blocked writers tend to struggle because they don’t know where to start… and therefore assume they’re not ready to get drafting. Instead of putting words on the page (which feels so big! so final!), draft-blocked writers noodle endlessly with worldbuilding details, plot structure, character bios, etc. – anything that delays the inevitable.

The defining feature of a draft-blocked writer is how much about their story they already know. A draft-blocked writer could probably narrate the entirety of their plot off the top of their head. They can tell you all about their characters, their world, the central conflicts in their story… and yet they still don’t have a draft. This isn’t a writer at a loss for where their story goes. They have the beginning, middle, and end (imagined in a whole lotta detail) sitting in their head.

(They’re also the kind of writer who wishes they could download their thoughts onto the page and be done with it – though I suspect we’ve all wished for that superpower at some point!)

Does this sound like you? If so, here are some tips for ripping off the band-aid and forging into that first draft:

  • Give yourself permission to suck.

I’m serious. First drafts are always a little wonky, no matter how much experience you have as a writer. If you’re brand new to the novel-writing thing (or the SFF novel-writing thing), your first draft is going to be wonkier than, say, a career writer who has spent thirty years in the business.

You’ll find writing advice on the internet that goes something like “Don’t worry about your first book, it will suck and you will be ashamed of it.” That’s absolutely not what I’m trying to say.

You can and should be proud of the first book you write.

But even the best writers don’t get it perfect on the first (draft) try. Many of us struggle with beginnings. It’s okay if the dialogue isn’t sparkling. If the setting is a little wibbly. If you feel like you aren’t getting your character voices right.

It’s okay if you start in the wrong place and realize, after writing, that the first scene is boring. It’s okay if you write it out and decide that, actually, you want to switch from first to third person narration (or vice versa).

It’s okay if you write chapter, after chapter, after chapter, thinking ‘wow, this is harder than I thought, and I’m not very good at it’.

Let go of the fear of failure – of the words on paper falling short of the magical world that lives inside your head.

You can fix the words on the page in revisions. You can’t fix a blank page.

Every mistake you make in the drafting process is one you can learn from – and those mistakes will, ultimately, make you a stronger writer so long as you do the work needed to fix them.

  • It takes 10,000 hours (or 1,000,000 words, depending on who you ask).

If you’ve taken advice on subject mastery from Malcolm Gladwell or Stephen King, you might have run across either of these two figures. Gladwell champions the 10,000 hours approach (ie: that’s how long it takes to master a discipline). Stephen King believes the first million words of written fiction are practice.

That’s a lot of practice.

Where are you in your writing journey? If the words you’re struggling to squeeze out are the very first you’re putting to paper, take some solace in those numbers. Is the road to mastery a long one? Yes. Can it seem daunting at times? Of course. The upshot, though, is that the book you’re writing is a practice round. It doesn’t have to measure up to published works in your genre. It doesn’t need to be groundbreaking or profound.

It doesn’t need to be perfect.

The clock on that 10,000 hours starts the moment you put those first words to paper. All writers have a long way to go before achieving mastery of their fields, so get started!

Plot-blocked writers

So you’ve built a world with 10,000 years of consecutive, fleshed-out history. Perhaps there’s no single, definitive conflict, but rather, lots of cyclical conflict. That’s very cool – very true to life! I love SFF that serves as both an escape from the real world, and a mirror through which we can explore real-world issues.

But.

These epics can be a beast to plot.

The defining features of a plot-blocked writers are twofold: first, in how much of the world they’ve developed. (If you know the name of every king to sit on a nation’s throne for a 2,000-year dynasty, you might fall into this category.) Second, in how much of the plot they don’t know.

You might be a plot-blocked writer if you stare at all your worldbuilding notes and think ‘But where do I even begin?’ Not just where to start your opening chapter – that concern might not even cross your mind. Plot-blocked writers often don’t know who their protagonist is. Do you focus on the king in the year 523, or the draconic invasion in year 1278?

Do you set the story in Nriian, the elvish forest, or among the coastal mountain dwarves?

The world is your sandbox, and you have no idea what kind of castle you want to build.

You’ve put in a whole lotta hard work into this incredible, rich world. So much work, in fact, that your issue isn’t the lack of possible plot points, but a surfeit of them. That’s an amazing problem to have, even if it might not feel that way right now. Why not reward yourself for all of that hard work by letting yourself play in your sandbox for a little while?

No pressure. Just messing around.

How does one ‘play in the sandbox’ of an epic, multi-generational world?

Flash fiction.

There’s a ton of writing advice championing short fiction (particularly short stories) as a great way to get to know characters, hone voice, and strengthen your plot and setting ideas before forging into the novel itself. I agree with that advice in theory, but want to sharpen it further in practice.

Don’t worry about writing a complete short story. Those can range up to 20k! Instead, focus on short, exploratory writing bursts: aka flash fiction.

The definition of flash fiction varies depending on which source you consult, but for the purpose of this post, let’s say that flash fiction is any story less than 1500 words. When I write flash fiction, especially when I’m doing exploratory writing, I try to use time-based goals instead of wordcount goals.

In other words, I sit down at my computer, set my timer for fifteen minutes, and start typing to see what comes out.

Want to write about an elf in year 214 when the empire was still young? Set your timer and do it. Want to skip next to the orphan farm boy in year 2783 when the apocalypse is nigh? No worries. And of course, if you skip back a thousand years the following morning, that’s fine.

Continuity isn’t an issue. Changing characterization between flash fics is fine. You can alter your history, change names, play with conflicting ideas – anything is fair game in these exploratory shorts. You’re poking at ideas in writing exercises. There’s no such thing as a plot hole, here.

What a relief, right?

Try to set these fics in super-deep POV. Resist the temptation to retell history from an authorial perspective (you already know the history! That won’t teach you anything new). By getting inside different characters’ heads, you can start sniffing out where the interesting stories are. Eventually, you’ll start to see trends emerge – ideas you keep noodling with, time periods you prefer, or characters you return to time and again.

Even the characters, time periods, and setting details you don’t see the relevance of will work their way into your story in surprising ways. Flash fiction is, above all, a brainstorming exercise. Instead of daydreaming by looking out the window, though, we’re daydreaming directly onto the page in short narrative ‘thoughts’. Expressing these thoughts via written word – and having record of them! – will help tremendously when you eventually start the drafting process.

Double bonus? You’ve finally gotten words onto the page, at last! You’ve broken the seal! You’re doing it!

Triple bonus? You’ll have a wealth of short stories to use in newsletters, as promo, or to start a Patreon someday.

If you’d like to try writing flash fiction but need a push to get started, why not join me for my Morning Pages? I write to SFF prompts in the morning several times a week. Sometimes I dip into universes that already exist in my head. Other times, I write whatever idea jumps into my mind. They’ve been a tremendously helpful way to flex my creative muscles and explore different writing styles, skills, and ideas. I’d love to see you there!

Up next week: revision-blocked writers

Come join me next week for part three of my (now four-part, eek) series on worldbuilder’s disease. I’ll break down the problems facing revision-blocked writers and offer solutions for those of us who catch ourselves revising our first four chapters ad infinitum instead of finishing our novels.

As always, if you’re enjoying the content, please consider liking this post or dropping your e-mail in the subscribe box in the side bar so you don’t miss an update.

Worldbuilder’s Disease: Intro

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Many Sci-fi/Fantasy (SFF) writers create their first worlds in childhood. They might spend years crafting epics in their heads before putting pen to paper. (I did it, too.) We build settings, characters, backstories, religions, environments, and systems of governance. Some of us have art, maps, maybe even notebooks full of details. Pinterest boards. Folders on our hard drives filled with inspo.

We know everything about our worlds. Clothing, food, trade systems, how sociopolitical factions conflict with one another. Some of us might have the scaffold for thousands of years of history already constructed. These worlds are real, are alive inside our heads.

…but we don’t have a draft of the novel.

In this three-part blog series on worldbuilder’s disease and its associated elements, I’ll tackle the following topics:

  1. What worldbuilder’s disease is and why getting trapped in the worldbuilding phase is dangerous
  2. Overcoming worldbuilder’s disease and getting our project started
  3. The pitfalls those with worldbuilder’s disease will likely encounter while drafting

I hope this serves as a useful reference for my fellow spec fic writers, whether or not you identify as a member of the worldbuilder’s disease club.

What is worldbuilder’s disease?

The defining characteristic of worldbuilder’s disease lies not in the vividness of the built world, but rather, in the sparseness of the writing. In other words: there isn’t any writing, even though we’ve spent years upon years cooking ideas in our heads.

Or, alternatively, there is writing – but not a complete story. Maybe we’ve started a bunch of different novels but never finished any of them. Maybe we keep rewriting the same opening chapters of one story over, and over, and over again.

Whatever the case may be, we have a head (or notebook) full of ideas and almost no narrative content in functional draft form.

Not all diseases are malignant.

Worldbuilder’s disease isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with filling notebooks with new languages or alternate universes (Tolkien did it, too). Some worldbuilders are more interested in the building than the storytelling, and that’s fine. If you get joy from making character profiles but never want to craft the narrative itself, that’s cool and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You don’t have to ‘use’ your world by putting it into a story.

That said, if your ultimate goal is to write a SFF epic someday, worldbuilder’s disease starts to look a little less benign.

Once we’ve spent years worldbuilding without writing, the act of worldbuilding becomes an impediment instead of an aid. This doesn’t apply if the project is backburnered in favor of drafting others, of course. Worldbuilder’s disease becomes a problem only when it prevents us from getting any words onto the page.

At that point, we’re faced not with a fun story-building pastime, but rather, elaborately crafted writer’s block. We trick ourselves into thinking we’re working on our work-in-progress (WIP) by doing everything but the writing itself and put months (years?) into the pre-production phase. In reality, once we’ve spent more than a few weeks on worldbuilding, we’re well past the point of diminishing returns.

Writers with worldbuilder’s disease tend to have one of two drafting roadblocks:

  • “I don’t know how to get started.” (Related: I’m not done fleshing out 10,000 years of history. I just can’t make myself pick up the pen. I’m afraid the reality won’t live up to what’s in my head. I have no idea how to make a story out of a bible’s worth of worldbuilding facts.)
  • “I don’t know where to start.” (Related: How do I fit 10,000 years of history into a single story? I’m not sure which characters to focus on. How the heck do you figure out where to start chapter one after you’ve crafted an entire space opera universe?)

If you have worldbuilder’s disease and are stuck in an inescapable rut, I have a spoonful of motivation to share with you: the same realization that helped me transition from building worlds in my head to putting them down on paper.

We don’t need to spend ten years getting a world down on paper. We don’t need to know everything about our worlds when we start writing.

Most importantly: our readers don’t need to know everything about our worlds, either.

Why?

No one cares about our worlds.

Yes, ouch, I know – believe me, I know.

You may be squinting at the screen and saying ‘No way, Cee. GRRM, Tolkien, etc. built words that people are obsessed with. There are wikis and merch and fanworks to prove it.’

And yes, you’d be right to say so. People are obsessed with the world of the Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc. I’m not immune to this obsession. Know what else all of those works have in common?

The authors already wrote the stories. People don’t read Tolkien’s notes for giggles. They read them because they fell in love with the story Tolkien told. Though Tolkien ostensibly wrote LotR to have somewhere to house his nerdy languages and eons of history, he wove all of that worldbuilding into the story via

  • Engaging characters, and
  • A compelling narrative tale.

If he hadn’t, the SFF community wouldn’t have spent years digging through every letter he wrote to trace the history of Middle-Earth.

(If Frodo hadn’t (mostly) cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, no one would care about the Dark Lord, his tower, or his ring.)

In other words, the bitter part of the medicine – no one cares about our worlds – is sweetened by this:

No one cares about our worlds until we tie them to plot and character.

Rest assured, it is possible to get readers to love the world we’ve built as much as we do – but the only way to get there is to write the story that goes with it.

When we worldbuild, we come up with some truly amazing, creative ideas. Rainbow wyverns who eat prismatic light and pelt attackers with gold. Desert wyrms who can split apart and multiply in-battle like the world’s most infuriating videogame boss.

Yet those amazing creations aren’t enough on their own. They only matter inasmuch as they have a direct impact upon the characters in our story.

These wyverns and wyrms won’t drive the reader to keep turning pages unless they come into direct conflict with characters the reader cares about. Until a rainbow wyvern lobs a nugget into the protagonist’s head, why should it matter to the reader that they turn light to gold? Until worldbuilding details interact with a character, they exist in a vacuum.

I’m going to distill this idea, because it’s vital to understanding how worldbuilding serves our writing: a setting’s importance to the reader is directly proportional to how much of an impact that setting has upon the characters. The more conflict the setting causes, the more interesting the setting becomes.

In order for our readers to care about the world we spent ten years crafting inside our minds, we have to write a story that takes them through that world, showcasing its most interesting bits through the events of the plot.

Think of the narrative like the tracks on an amusement park ride. The ride itself is meaningless from the outside – a potential experience that has yet to come to pass. The story (or the rail the ride’s car sits on) guides the reader through that world in a fun, engaging way. Readers might not notice every bit of machinery that makes the ride go. They may focus on one bit of the ride and ignore others. But the tracks you’ve built – or the story you craft – is what makes that ride accessible.

Otherwise, they’re standing on the other side of a gate, looking in at an overwhelming amount of information without any compelling reason to slog through any of it.

Worldbuilding isn’t writing

For those of us with worldbuilder’s disease, it’s imperative that we stop thinking about worldbuilding as time spent writing.

(Caveat: those of us who don’t have worldbuilder’s disease may find the opposite helpful. I have a friend who counts all of his worldbuilding words as ‘words written today’ to keep himself from skimping on the planning process.)

Until you have several completed drafts under your belt, counting planning words is a kiss of death. It gives you permission to avoid the difficult work: actually writing your story.

This is hard. Harder for those of us who’ve been worldbuilding for years and consider the worlds in our head a second home. So long as the setting remains intact in our minds, it’s perfect – the exact story we’ve always wanted to read. We can play it through our minds in its entirety – all ten thousand years of it – and don’t have to think about character arcs, killing darlings, or avoiding white-room syndrome.

As soon as our worlds hit the page, they’re beholden to two Big Scary Limitations:

  • The limits of narrative structure, and
  • The limits of our technical skill.

If we want to write our story, we must accept that imperfect words on a page are better than perfect words inside our head. We must let ourselves believe that, even though some of the richness of our world will invariably be lost in translation, we cannot transport anyone else to that world with us unless we make an attempt at translating. And even if the limits of narrative structure demand that we only tell a mere fraction of the full measure of the story in our heads, that mere fraction is more than what currently sits in our blank drafting document.

The first step of curing worldbuilder’s disease is getting started.

Stay tuned for next week’s post when I’ll write about mending our worldbuilding ways and getting words onto paper for the first time (or getting past whatever chapter keeps hanging you up!). Join me again on week three when I break down some of the biggest pitfalls those of us with worldbuilder’s disease encounter as soon as the words start flowing.

And if you’re looking for a way to get something – anything – on paper in the meantime, join me tomorrow (and Saturday, and Sunday, and Tuesday) for Morning Pages: short flash fiction prompts for SFF writers looking to jumpstart creativity and chat about craft.

Romance and the ‘Other’

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What makes a Romance?

There’s a difference between a story with romantic elements and a capital-R Romance. In Romance, the romantic arc finishes with a default happily-ever-after (HEA) or happily-for-now (HFN) ending. The HEA isn’t the only required element of a Romance, but it’s among the most important. These elements are part of a Romance’s DNA, and must be there in order for the story to fulfil the promises made to the reader when they pick up the book.

A romantic story can be a love story, but it doesn’t need to have a HEA, nor does it need to include all of the classic elements of a Romance. That gives the writer more flexibility, but also means they can’t bill their story as a capital-R Romance without making a false promise to the reader.

While these ironclad conventions can be found in just about every genre, Romance’s obligate HEA makes it a particularly difficult genre to write. Why? Because readers know how the book is going to end. If readers know the ending, how can it be exciting and compelling?

That’s the unique difficulty faced by Romance writers.

Romance is in the journey

Romance doesn’t spring from a vacuum. The romantic plotline must be tied:

1. to the character’s internal growth arc (ie: how they become a better person throughout the course of the book), and

2. to the external conflict (ie: your protagonist’s quest to defeat the Big Bad Werewolf. Or whatever).

If the romantic arc doesn’t have that depth, it’s going to lack power. Readers won’t connect with the relationship. They won’t see how it’s essential for those characters to end up together, and thus, they won’t ‘ship’ it.

We need our readers to fall in love not just with the romantic arc, but with our external plot, our world, and our characters. Only then will they begin to root for that happy ending.

The journey of the plot

Part of the lure of Romance is in the drama: in Love Overcoming the Forces of Evil (or, at least, love overcoming a super thorny obstacle). Not necessarily love itself, mind, but the characters who are in love. By the end of the book, each character must choose to put their partner and relationship first. They face the Big Bad together as a unit – and together, they can’t lose.

Naturally, this unity can’t come too easily or you won’t have a plot. Every good Romance needs repelling forces – something that pushes the couple apart.

This is what makes Romance interesting even though readers know the HEA is just around the corner. Romance isn’t about the surprise of the ending – it’s about how the writer builds up to and delivers the ending. That journey only becomes interesting when the reader can’t imagine how the characters are going to make it to the HEA.

There’s a saying about three-act (and most classic Romances are three-act): first, you get your character in a tree. Then, you throw rocks at the tree. Finally, you have to figure out how to get them out of the tree. This is the crux of a good Romance: the tree has to be so high, and the rocks so heavy, that your reader can’t see how your character can possibly win. When it all comes together in the end, though, it’s incredibly satisfying.

Readers know the answer. The hook is all about how we lead them to it – and how good we are at getting them to root for the happy ending they know is coming.

The secret to a good HEA? Building attracting forces.

The journey of the characters

If we do a good job of character building, we’ll end up with a pair of puzzle pieces: two characters who uniquely complement one another. When they’re in their healthiest, most functional state, they push one another to grow positively towards the end of their character arc. This growth allows them to solve the external plot problem (and defeat the Big Bad) in a creative way.

That positive growth is a huge attracting force.

In a classic Romance, both MCs are POV characters. One of the two is always the primary protagonist. This character tends to be easier to flesh out. They start the story, they carry the primary growth arc, they drive the plot forward. It’s harder to create the love interest, though – even when we get the chance to dip into their head.

If we make our love interest (LI) as dynamic as the protag and successfully tie their arc to both the relationship conflict and the external conflict, we’ll end up with a compelling duo. These characters solve their problems by growing together, making it clear they’re better as a couple than they are apart. That’s half the battle to hook the reader won.

Yet there are plenty of Romances – and romantic stories – that fall well short of the mark.

Why?

Well, usually because the love interest has a personality as compelling as wet cardboard.

Where do wet-cardboard love interests come from?

The biggest mistake we can write when crafting a Romance is to create a love interest that exists only to fill a hole in the protagonist’s life. This lends itself to lazy writing – to falling back on shorthand and stereotypes in order to build a certain “kind” of character instead of a fully-realized person.

These stereotypes are the bane of every romance writer’s existence. They’re old, they’re stale, and they ruin our stories.

Male writers writing female characters: from scottbaiowulf on tumblr. Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, he breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.

In romantic fiction, the wet-cardboard character stems, all too often, from what I call the “I can’t write men/women” problem.

For the past few weeks, I’ve listened to the Writing Excuses podcast while going for my afternoon walks. I started with the oldest episodes and am working my way forward in time, so take all of this with a grain of salt, because I believe the episode I’m about to mention is from 2009.

In it, the WE guys chat about writing Romance. Brandon Sanderson (who is, IMO, a great Fantasy author), mentioned that he wasn’t good at writing female protagonists. I pulled up short as I was walking to hear his advice to listeners:

In order to write good female characters, one must ensure they’re fully fleshed-out people with their own independent arcs.

This was lauded as Pretty Darn Good advice from the other guys on the podcast. In the most general way, yes – side-characters should always feel like the heroes of their own story. But the message I heard was this: I have trouble with female protagonists because it’s hard for me to write women as full fleshed-out people.

::deep breaths::

Again, remember – this is from 2009. A lot has changed in ten years.

Some things, though, remain the same. Men still get flack for writing women badly. Women, too, get flack for writing ‘unrealistic’ male characters (particularly in the Romance genre). As more time passes and the artifice of binary gender constructs becomes more apparent to the collective Western consciousness (–hi, yes, I’m queer – welcome to the blog–), this “men writing women badly, women writing men badly” problem becomes increasingly absurd.

Why is this so difficult? Why do people keep getting it wrong?

Because sometimes, we struggle to see beyond identity to the human being underneath.

If you let misogynistic/racist/homophobic/transphobic/ableist/ageist bias prevent you from seeing your character as a fully realized human being because of their identity, you’re going to end up with a half-baked stereotype instead of a compelling character.

We all have biases. We are all flawed humans raised in a flawed society. It is an exercise in empathy to see people who are different from us as complete, complex human beings. This goes doubly true when we’re talking about characters who aren’t the white/cis/hetero/male majority.

Minority characters have been relegated to reductive side-show roles for so long it’s difficult to bring them into the limelight – even when we identify with those characters. We treat the Other like an NPC in a video game. Simple. Derivative. Boring.

Please understand: I’m not trying to argue that we’re all the same regardless of identity. We (as humans) have had different lives and different experiences. Many of those experiences are colored by our unique identities. Experiences inform a huge part of who we are.

Yet while identity influences the character, identity does not make the character. If we rely entirely on an identity and the stereotypes surrounding that identity to inform characterization, we’ll end up with a cardboard amalgamation of lazy writing.

The love interest will, therefore, become a NPC in the video game that is the MC’s life: a red-shirt the reader never attaches to and doesn’t care about. It is impossible to write a compelling romance this way.

Don’t write from gender.

That is my single biggest piece of advice. If someone asks “how do I write a man? How do I write a woman?” I answer: start with a character, add gender later.

Look, I write queer fiction, so gender is a wibbly concept for me anyway. I do this naturally. I don’t always know the gender identity of my protagonists and love interests going into a story. (Writing is fun this way – you should try it!) But if you do have a concrete idea of your character’s gender identity – cool. Fine. Put it in a box in your head and set it aside.

Now create a person. A human character. Don’t think about their gender. Don’t start from their gender. Every time you hear yourself saying “well, he’s a man, so—” just stop.

Write a human character, fully-fleshed out, with all the faults and foibles of a person. Only when you get to the point that this person starts to feel real do you go back and say “ok, well – she’s like X, so how would that impact her life?”

She’s bisexual. How would that impact her life and experiences? She’s Asian. How would that impact her life and experiences? She’s hyper-intelligent. She has a messed-up relationship with her mother. She’s a woman.

Given her backstory, personality, and the world she lives in, how would that impact her life and experiences?

Gender is a tool, not a determining factor. It’s a prop through which you can filter a subset of predetermined experiences for your character. It’s not a governing force in that character’s whole personhood.

Resist the desire to attribute patterns of thought and action to gender.

“She’s obsessing over the possibility of a future relationship because she’s a woman.” NO. Stop. She’s obsessing because she’s the kind of person who obsesses. Because she’s an anxious thinker. Because she also obsesses about what her boss thinks, whether she did well in that meeting, whether she did something to offend the stranger who looked at her funny on the subway.

And if she isn’t an obsessive thinker – then why the heck is she obsessing over a possibility of a future relationship? Because that’s “what women do”? No, friend. That’s where we cross the line from behavioral justification to stereotype.

It’s the literary equivalent of saying a character likes pink, fashion, and painting her nails “because she’s a woman.”

We fall back upon these stereotypes – especially when we write other genders – because we’re told our whole lives that “men/women/NB folks are alien creatures we can never hope to understand.” Lack of empathy is lazy writing. It’s lazy living. If we do the work of figuring out who our characters are beyond the veneer of gender/race/sexual orientation/etc., we won’t need to rely on stereotypes to determine how they’d act or react in a given situation.

The question is never “well, what would a man do in this situation?” The question is: “well, what would Darius, the character I created with my brain, do in this situation?”

Writing from stereotypes is what not to do. It’s how to sink a romantic ‘ship before it sets sail.

So how do we write a convincing romantic partnership?

Character driven romance

If escaping tropey stereotypes is a struggle of yours (or if you’ve ever said “I’m not good at writing X gender”), here’s your road map:

  • Come up with two fully fleshed-out characters. Make one a romantic and one a realist. One a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants type and one an overthinker. One an introvert and one an extravert. (And so on, and so on.) Don’t let gender determine which is which, because wtf does gender have to do with introversion? C’mon.
  • Give your characters heart. Give them unique backstories. Make their actions, reactions, and emotions internally consistent with their lived experiences. Figure out how to fit them together like two puzzle pieces who are stronger when working with one another than they are when they’re apart. What, besides physical attraction, pulls them together?
  • Determine their character growth arcs, and tie them to the external plot.
  • Create a relationship growth arc that also ties to the external plot.

Now figure out their genders.

If you’ve done a good job of developing your characters, weaving their arcs, and connecting them to the plot, you’ll end up with ‘real’ characters who can and will generate authentic romantic tension on the page. They’re primed to fall in love with one another from that very first meet-cute. It’s crystal clear why they can and should be together.

Most importantly, you’ve created characters the readers can fall in love with, too. This is the backbone of a Romance. It’s heckin’ hard to write, but completely worth it in the end. Creating a rich, romantic emotional experience for the reader is a truly magical skill.

It rests entirely on characterization work. We want to create people, not NPCs. We must let our characters’ identities inform but not define how we write them.

(And for the love of god, let’s stop sending our women off to breast boobily to the stairs.)

Make it Work

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Do you ever sit at the screen and know that getting words on the page will come about as easily as swallowing rusty nails? I think we all have days like this. Professionals aren’t immune to them either, if the myriad twitterverse posts on the subject are to be believed.

But we don’t all face the same battles on those days. Folks who write for the love of it – with no intent to publish – don’t have to pick up the pen on the days when it’s a struggle. This isn’t in any way meant to shade hobby writers. There shouldn’t be a pressure to commodify everything we love, and a writer needn’t have publication as an end goal in order for the time they spend writing to be meaningful, legitimate, and useful. But writing goals will change how we approach those rusty-nail days

Those of us who are trying to write professionally must adhere to deadlines. We don’t set down the pen when the words won’t come – which means we can’t wait for sweet, sweet inspiration to strike before we put words to paper.

“I just can’t write today.”

It’s so easy to fall behind on deadlines. If I go a week without writing, I’ll end up with a mountain of words that needs to come out before I’m back on schedule again. It’s incredibly daunting to watch a deficit build after days upon days of undershooting my goals, which makes it tough to re-start.

Last year was incredibly tough on me. Each time a new horror show hit the news, it sapped my productivity and put me behind my planned wordcount. Then, I’d start feeling better about the world, only to be faced with a 4-5k wordcount hole.

The hardest part about writing, is writing.

It’s writing when I can’t write: when the well of inspiration has run dry, and I struggle to get words down onto the page.

I’m 100% for the general thrust of internet advice that says if you can’t write, if this is killing you, don’t beat yourself up. I’m not saying ‘your cat died? Suck it up and write’. That’s, well. Tone-deaf at best, cruel at worst. There are going to be times when you simply cannot get words down. You know when those times are, and that’s not what I’m talking about.

This is also not a post about pushing through mental or physical health difficulties to “just write”. Folks who struggle with their health must think of their health first. Work must always come second to our physical and mental wellbeing.

I’m talking about those fringe times when nothing is particularly wrong, but you’re feeling low-energy, like your will to work has run dry. These are the moments that I want to focus on for myself, because they’re going to impact whether or not I turn work in on time.

Here’s what it comes down to:

Once we’ve cleared major obstacles from our path (obligations, commitments, health problems), can we make ourselves do the work?

There is no silver bullet for motivation

The unfortunate truth is that motivation is a unique, internal process. I can’t motivate you to sit down and write. You can’t motivate me.

To get really hokey: motivation is like happiness. It’s something we have to create for ourselves.

There are general tips and tricks to motivation, of course – ones you can find just about anywhere on the internet. I learn best when presented with specifics, though, and wanted to dedicate a post to sharing these specifics with you. When presented with evidence of others’ productivity, I always ask myself

How do they do it?

Hopefully this answers that question for you. I’d love to hear about your writing rituals in the comments – the more we compile, the more we can learn from one another’s motivation and productivity methods.

Your methods are unique to you, and that’s okay

I’m going to share two different scenarios:

  1. My typical daily wordcount push. I write between 1.5k and 2.5k each day when I have my head on straight – but that doesn’t mean I always want to.
  2. A desperate 4k push to chip away at a deficit I’ve created for myself.

These wordcounts might look nothing like yours. Maybe they’re way over or way under your averages. Don’t negatively compare yourself to them! I’m giving concrete numbers for the sake of illustrating an example and helping you calibrate your own motivational habits, not for the sake of holding up my own stats as some kind of gold standard.

(Because trust me, a gold standard they are definitely not.)

Different writers also count different kinds of words. When I say “wordcount”, I always mean fully-drafted wordcounts. I don’t count outlines, zero drafts, notes, or otherwise. I know some writers do count words on a fast-draft, zero-draft, or skeleton outline, but I won’t. I find zero drafting the most fun part of the process, so I don’t let myself get a reward until I go another step and turn that zero draft into actual prose.

That’s a personal choice. How you count words is entirely up to you. I have a friend who counts all worldbuilding, plotting, and notetaking words because he feels guilty and unproductive spending time on them if he doesn’t. That is very smart of him. Customize what ‘counts’ to guide yourself in the right direction.

If you’re interested in the kind of writing I’d count towards a daily wordcount goal, you can look at my Morning Pages – that’s the general quality and style of prose I’ll consider good enough for a first draft before moving onto the next scene.

Daily writing and wordcount minimums

When I say I end up with 1.5k-2.5k each day, it sounds like I’m working on a daily minimum wordcount. (It also sounds like I have an enormous wordcount range, oop.)

But I’m not working by a wordcount goal. That’s an expected range I’ve come up with after learning a lot about my writing speed and style over the past year. When I write as part of a daily habit, time is the only metric I care about. My ‘goal’ wordcount is bang on 2k. Some days I won’t hit it before time runs out. Other days I’ll exceed it. If it averages out to 10k/wk, I’m happy.

I plan to write five days a week for 2.5hrs each writing day. I don’t have my hands to the keyboard for the entirety of those 2.5 hours. Sometimes I’m outlining, sometimes I’m zero drafting, sometimes I’m staring at the screen while pulling my hair out. At the end of the week, though, I’ll make that average wordcount just by virtue of the time I spend working.

If I need to bump my weekly output upwards (hello NaNoWriMo), I’ll add more days before I add more time. Days off are sacred, but sometimes I need to get a draft done, and adding time to my 2.5 hours is a dangerous gamble.

Why? Because 2.5 hours is absolutely when I hit diminishing returns. If I could give you any single piece of advice about writing schedules, it’s this: know your point of diminishing returns and let it determine your stopping time.

YMMV. 2.5 hours might be a drop in the bucket for you. Conversely, writing for 2.5 straight hours might be literally impossible. Either way, I’m a big proponent of figuring out a schedule that works and doing your utmost to stick to it.

Scheduling your writing time effectively

As a schedule-focused person, I’m at my best when I break that 2.5 hour block into chunks. If I don’t, I end up wasting a ton of time. I might be disciplined, but I’m also incredibly susceptible to distraction.

I have a time cube with which I choose work times. I typically sprint in half hour segments. Though I put my phone out of arm’s reach, I don’t turn it off, and I won’t time my breaks between sprints unless I’m having serious difficulty focusing that day. If I’m grooving, I won’t take breaks.

Sometimes I’ll sprint with friends in my writer’s group for accountability’s sake. Depending on what I’m working on and how it’s going, I can see a 500 to 1,000 word range after a half hour of sprinting.

When I’m really struggling, I’ll put my phone across the room and write in Full Screen mode on Scrivener. I turn my volume down and all of my notifications off. If this still isn’t enough, I’ll disconnect my internet. That’s when I use the time cube to restrict my breaks – five minutes each – and refuse to let myself touch my phone or use the internet even between sprints.

Point is: you know what distracts you and pulls you away from writing. Some distractions (like your family or important phone calls) can’t be helped. Others (like twitter) absolutely can be managed – it’s a matter of figuring out how. Obviously, I’m an extreme case – I have so little self-control when I’m struggling to write that I have to unplug my router. But I do what I have to do to make sure my writing time is sacred.

If I don’t, I end up digging myself a serious, serious hole.

Hitting a high one-time wordcount goal

And getting back out of that hole is easier said than done.

If I have a deadline and need a certain number of words to hit the page to meet it, I might have to set a wordcount goal between 4k and 5k. I know folks who can write way more than that in a day – I’m not one of them. 5k is right at my maximum productivity threshold. It will take me an entire day to complete.

When I have to make up deficits, I’m often not in a good place to write in the first place. If I were in a good mindset, I wouldn’t have gotten myself into that deficit – or at least, the hole wouldn’t be so deep that I had to write 4-5k in a day.

(On the occasions when I need to ramp up productivity a tad over a longer period of time, I’ll do it by either ensuring I hit my 2k goal, or by adding an extra 500 words onto my finishing point each day.)

One-time wordcount goals are about worst-case-scenario deadline crunches.

I’m never happy about them.

But here’s how I get them done, even if it’s like pulling teeth the whole workday:

  • I caffeinate as much as I want. While this isn’t the kind of long-term habit I want to start, if I need to do a serious push only once, sure, I’ll make myself that second Americano at 2pm.
  • I get up early. My ‘early’ is somewhere between 7am and 8am, YMMV. I force myself to go to the gym or do some other kind of serious physical workout. Without that activity, I end up feeling like a dull, listless potato by mid-afternoon, which is a terrible headspace for me to write from.
  • When I sit down to write, I try every single trick to get myself into the mood: cozy sweaters, the right music, pretty Scrivener backgrounds, cool but unreasonable font choices, etc.
  • I put my phone in my kitchen – the absolute maximum range for my Bluetooth speaker. It’s a pain to go all the way into the kitchen to check twitter. This is not an accident.
  • If I have to, I disconnect the internet.
  • I set my time cube to (preferably) 30 minutes. If I’m really struggling, I’ll sprint in 15-minute intervals.
  • At each 30-minute mark, I get down on the floor (yes, the floor) and stretch my back for 5 minutes. My back hates the fact that I chose to be a writer. At this point, I’ll switch the music to pump-up tunes.
  • I don’t write more than 2.5hrs at a time – aka my previously established point of diminishing returns. After 2.5hrs of elapsed writing time, I get up and leave my apartment. Maybe it’s to get that treat I promised myself (omnomnom). More often it’s to take a half hour walk and listen to a podcast. If I’ve been stuck on a plot, I might record myself speaking into my phone (I use otter.ai for voice-to-text).
    • (Side note: when I was a little kid, I mostly ‘wrote’ stories by acting them out loud alone in my bedroom. I used to dress up as characters, too. Sometimes it helps to go back to whatever method we used when we were little when we’re blocked, because it’ll always come more naturally.)
  • No social media. Period. At all. All day.
  • Rinse and repeat until the work is done.
  • I stop working the second I hit my goal. These types of writing days are super-draining on energy and creativity, so I want to spend as much time as possible at the end of the day filling my well back up again. I try to stay away from social media even after I finish writing in favor of reading, consuming media I was looking forward to, drawing, or chatting with folks in my writing group.
  • Most importantly: I don’t stress, even a little, about the quality of my writing. When words come out like nails, I’m certain the writing is terrible because it feels terrible. It’s never as bad as I think it is. Even if it is … sub-par 5k on the page is better than perfect 5k in my head.

All of those ideas and habits are very specific to me and my process, of course, but you’re welcome to try any of them out! I didn’t invent my schedule organically – it came from looking at what other writers did and having a go at imitating their processes, keeping what worked for me and discarding what didn’t.

If I could give one piece of advice, though, it’d be this:

Don’t reward yourself with social media. That ish is like quicksand – once you’re on it, it’s impossible to escape. Make your Big Writing Wordcount Goal days social media free days and your life will be so much easier.

Track. Your. Progress.

Tracking progress is a vital part of my process. It gives me that boost of dopamine each time I hit my goals, and helps me gather and crunch data to tailor my writing routine to my needs.

If you’re new to tracking your progress, here’s the data I find most helpful to have on hand:

  • What project I worked on
  • How much I wrote
  • How long I wrote
  • What time of day I wrote
  • How hard it was to get it out

You’re welcome to add and subtract as necessary – and use any software you need! I really like NaNoWriMo’s goal-setting for this (it tracks all of the above metrics for you), but most writing programs let you set and track goals. I’ve also seen some writers use bullet journals and excel spreadsheets to track their progress.

Over the course of several months, I figured out the following things about myself:

  • I write best in half-hour sprint segments;
  • 2.5 hours is usually the limit before I need a big break from work;
  • I’m 5x more productive in the afternoon and evening than I am in the morning;
  • I work best when I only write 5-6 days a week instead of 7;
  • I’m not actually all that more productive when the words come easy than when they’re hard to get out, so letting that feeling get me down is silly;
  • If I so much as sniff in the direction of Instagram during designated writing time, the whole day is a wash.

My cold, hard facts contradict two pieces of writing advice I get all the time:

  • Write every day
  • Your brain works best in the morning

But hey – maybe those ^ two bits of advice are the absolute lynchpin for productivity for some. I’d never knock someone else’s technique. But I’d encourage every writer to experiment in order to figure out what works best for them.

Tracking progress helped me figure out how to schedule my writing days in order to best meet my deadlines. Now I know what time in my day is sacred and when/how to wield that time for the most efficient outcome.

(I’m trying a few different things this New Year, too, based on writing advice I’ve picked up from across the internet – more on that in a future post!)

Most importantly: tracking data keeps us from lying to ourselves.

IDK how many times I’ve said “but I just write better at 2am!” to myself in order to justify a day’s worth of procrastination. Turns out: I don’t. I’m most productive in the middle of the afternoon, and I have the data to back it up. Staring at those numbers – and the huge disparity between my 2am and 2pm productivity – makes it impossible to tell myself comfortable lies. You know the ones I mean: the lies we tell to excuse ourselves from doing work, making a change, or upending a cozy routine.

Track. Your. Progress.

Without the data it gives us, we flail around in the dark, trying others’ advice and wondering why it doesn’t feel like it’s working.

You won’t always hit your goals

I wrote a post earlier this month about using New Year’s resolutions to make several smaller goals instead of one or two huge ones. The general idea: start simple, rack up easy & early wins, grow from there.

Let’s give ourselves permission to start small, with goals we can meet with our eyes shut.

When we ramp up, let’s give ourselves permission to have bad days – or weeks, or months.

Let’s build those less productive times into our schedules. We can pad deadlines so the inevitable Week From Hell doesn’t upend everything we’ve worked for.

Yet if we fall behind (and we often do): let’s forgive ourselves. It can be fixed – even if the end result isn’t quite what we imagined when we first set out. The more we beat ourselves up for failing to meet goals, deadlines, planned wordcounts, etc., the harder it becomes to sit down and do more writing.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Let’s build healthy habits and cheer each other on along the way.

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Looking for a way to get started each day? Join me for my Morning Pages writing prompts on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Morning Pages are flash fiction prompts with spec fic flavor. Write along with me, and join the craft discussion in the comments!