Finding the time to write

This is something I struggled with a lot when I first started writing, and even now that I've gotten into the habit of writing everyday, things come up that pull me out of it now and again.

Like Now, for instance. The past few weeks I’ve been interning, studying for the GRE, starting this blog, packing to move (from one apartment building to another beside it), and preparing my book for publication. These are simply excuses.

I’ve actually found that, for the most part, I’m one of those people who does better writing when I’m busy. If I have to get up and show up for class at a certain time, I have no problem setting my alarm an hour earlier and writing first thing in the morning. If I have to get up really early for work, I write when I get home.

If I ever get a rare full day to myself with little or nothing that needs to be done-which sounds ideal for a writer-I actually get less done, proportionately. I’ll procrastinate. I’ll get distracted. I’ll open a blank document and think, “I have no idea what to write.” It’s like I have situational writer’s block.

It’s getting out and engaging with other people that give me ideas and inspiration for my stories, and allow me to clear my head. That being said, if I have too much on my plate, writing is often the first thing that goes, and once it does, it’s hard to jump back into.

In an effort to keep this from happening, I’ve learned to plan ahead and set aside designated time to write (an exact time works best, but if that’s too uncertain, then “as soon as I get home” or “right after dinner” works too). I try and keep this time the same for as long as possible (for example, I wrote first thing in the morning every day last semester, but over the summer I switched to writing before I go to sleep).

But of course, last minute surprises love to pop up and shatter all my careful planning. When that happens it’s easy to say, “Looks like I’m too busy to write.”

The truth is, most days, we’re never too busy to write. The time is there, we just aren’t looking for it hard enough. I mean, look at me-I’m on here (and you are too!) so we must have a few minutes to spare. The trick is to squeeze those minutes into hours.

If your schedule seems too busy, rearrange it. You might be thinking, “I can’t do that.” But chances are, you can, if you’re willing too. Some of the ways I’ve managed to cram in writing during those hectic busy weeks are by:

1) Cutting back on phone calls (this was a big one for me-I probably spend over an hour a day on the phone, on average. That gives me a whole half-hour to write, just by cutting it in half).

2) Getting up early, going to bed late. Sleep is important, but what is twenty or thirty minutes really going to do for you?

3) TV. Movies. Video Games. Need I say more?

4) Dinner. Do you usually cook? Try making something you can throw together quickly, then pop in the over for thirty minutes or more, and write while it cooks. If you usually eat out, try eating in, or ordering take out. Who says you can’t write while you eat?

5) Reading. It might sound counter-productive to give up reading to write, but if it’s a daily ritual you’ve already become accustomed to, try cutting your reading time in half, and devoting the other to writing.

6) If you live with other people, make sure they know you are writing. Or working. Or doing something important and should not be interrupted under any circumstance unless the house is on fire or the world is about to end. Or your favorite fictional character was just seen walking down the street. 

Of course, you don’t have to give up all of these things. Being a writer wouldn’t be very fun if all we ever did was write. These are just some suggestions, all of which I’ve cut at one time or another, but picked back up again when things slowed down a bit in the rest of my life.

Have you ever found it hard to find the time to write? How did you cope? Was there anything you had to give up? 

Make Believe

Here's a little "get-to-know-me" piece, since we're still starting out:


After reading Bethany's post on Ink-Splattered I've been thinking about playing make-believe and felt I had to post this. 

When I was little, my absolute favorite thing was to act out movies or books with friends. They started off as literally re-enacting the story, then progressed to making up our own adventures with the characters, and then we made up our own characters, and eventually, our own worlds. But of course, that was what I did when I was little. It’s not like I’m doing that now (says the creative writing student).

If I wasn’t a hobbit, I was the Swan Princess, or the little Mermaid, or a Jedi, or some unknown slave from some unexplored forest embedded deep in a lost crater on the moon.

In kindergarten, I was popular. I remember being surrounded by boys and girls alike who would help me hunt ghosts, fight off dragons, and explore hidden mines. Then reality hit. My teacher told me I couldn’t be a burglar when I grew up (but Bilbo is!) and I wasn’t allowed to put that in my report. First grade came around, and make-believe simply wasn’t cool. The spice girls were cool. Pokémon was cool.

It seemed I would have to choose between friends and fantasy. I’ve always been incredibly indecisive and stubborn, so I insisted on keeping both. It wasn’t easy; I was teased a lot (but who wasn’t?) and I had to give up a few great “adventures” but I kept my make-believe going now and again until middle school by finding the right people and showing them the right movies.

Then in middle school, I started writing stories. I was all about getting everyone involved, so I’d get a group of three or four together, start a story, hand it off, and see where it went. Sometimes, we ended up with a few short pages of semi-decent fan-fiction, while other times we had fairly good original stories. But then it became “un-cool” to write.

So I tried role-playing. Then that became un-cool as well.

Time to give up? Never! How can I get a group of high school people to dress up and run around acting like fictional characters? I know- I’ll make a movie! (Ok, so maybe that wasn't my exact process. I was actually interested in film, but the end result was the same: FUN!)

Me as Ash in a pokemon parody. 

Me and my friend Kait as C3PO and R2D2 

Filming "The Ladies of the Rings" (if lotr took place in modern times with a female fellowship)

Pokemon 2010: A Parody 

(in case you're bored and need a laugh)

Anyone else play make-believe too? Did you continue it as you grew older, or did you find other ways to express your creativity? 

Music as Inspiration

Do you ever turn on the radio, or listen to a new CD, and hear a song that really resonates with you? One where it seems like the singer got inside your head and wrote about your life?

It happens to me all the time, especially when I’m making the (almost) monthly four and a half hour trip home.

Usually, when I listen to songs with lyrics, I associate them with a character. Sometimes it fits in with my own life, but often it’s a character from a book or movie. Now and then it will be a friend or relative. Other times, it’s a pure creation of my imagination. These songs can be incredibly inspiring, and can be a great source of story and character ideas. Here are a few that have been inspirational in my writing:

Mad World, Gary Jules

Stand My Ground, Within Temptation

Hurricane, 30 Seconds to Mars

And here's one that's been inspirational in my own life:

Free Life, Dan Wilson

Waiting out the flood

Well, I had a quite an eventful day today. I’m currently interning for the local news station, where I follow around different reporters and mostly just watch what’s going on. I'll do little things to help like offer suggestions on who to interview or carry the equipment and sometimes- if there’s time to kill and they're feeling generous- they'll let me shoot some footage (I once shot like 30 seconds of cans for a food drive that appeared on the news- that was kind of cool). 

Sent to cover a story about a local fire, today we took the live feed van, which made it quicker and easier to upload video from the field. It was kind of like what you’d imagine a slightly out of date high tech van would look like: crammed, covered in switches and wires, with a tiny little shelf that served as a desk and a small black stool. All that was missing was the lone gunmen (seen x-files?).

Anyway, we’re in this van when we get the assignment to film some footage of a storm about an hour away. That wouldn’t be too hard except, as we drive into the storm, we realize the windshield wipers aren’t working properly. But, it’s only lightly raining, so it’s all right. Then it starts raining harder. Then it’s pouring. Then, it’s hailing.

So now we’re on the highway going 60 + mph with a windshield wiper that’s half off in a giant van with a satellite on the roof in the middle of a thunderstorm. The rain’s coming down in blankets and we can’t make out a thing, so we pull over to the side of the road. We could feel the ground shaking when the cars sped past, and we could see the lightning through the cascade of water in front of us. The driver wouldn’t let me take my seatbelt off, because he’d seen cars get hit on the side of the road before (apparently, it happens more than you’d think), so I sat there, strapped inside a metal vehicle waiting out the storm.

Sometimes that’s all we can do: wait.

I used to hate waiting. It was the worst feeling in the world with me, second only to boredom, which usually come hand in hand. But then I realized that waiting isn’t so bad when I don’t look at it as waiting, but look at whatever I’m doing for whatever it is. Today, it was staying inside a car during a storm. That wasn’t so bad. At least I wasn’t out in the rain. I had water and music and someone to talk to. Once I stopped looking at it as waiting for the storm to pass, and started looking at it as being in a storm, it became a completely different experience.

Still a scary experience, but one much more bearable than boredom. So with a little hope, faith, and optimism, we waited out the storm and made it back to safety (2 hours after I was supposed to get off work), only to be called to another flood. This one was right across the street from my school.

Here are some of the pictures:

I’m so glad that’s not my car! One thing that was nice to see though was a man with an SUV who was helping tow cars out to safety (seen in pic above). He didn’t charge them or anything, just enjoyed off-roading and giving people a helping hand.  

Psychology of Superheroes

As a follow up to my last post, I stumbled across this site, which I thought was interesting. It's all about the psychology of super heroes.
Psychology Today, the superheroes blog

Here's a post they have on X-men: First Class, which includes some of the things I talked about in my last post on being different, both internally and/or externally, and also on the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which they're relating to Xavier's comment to Erik that his maximum potential lies somewhere between anger and serenity.

There are also posts featuring all our other favorite heroes, including Thor, Spiderman, Superman, Wonder woman and us- the loyal fans. If you, like me, are interested in psychology and super heroes, it's definitely a site to check out!

X-men and Comic Books

I saw the new X-men movie (X-men first class) about a week ago and loved it. I’ve been a huge x-men fan for a long time now, ever since the second movie came out and my mom took me to see it in theaters. I was hooked. I went home, watched the first one, returned to the theater to watch X2 again, then went to barns and noble and started on my large collection of graphic novels (collections of bound comic books). What can I say? There’s just something about teenagers with flawed and dangerous super powers that attracts me.

For those of you who are not comic book fans, and scoff at the idea that they have any value beyond pure entertainment, I’d ask you to reconsider. Take Spiderman, for example. The story of the web-slinging teenager is a classic heroic tale, yet it is filled with life lessons and societal morals. The champion of good overcomes much peril in the form of physical enemies as well as his own self-doubt and insecurities. In Amazing Spiderman # 36 he contributes by helping NYC with the aftermath of the all too real terrorist attack of September eleventh. In the Ultimate series, there is a greater focus on his home life, on his struggle to maintain his ‘normal’ teenage life, including relationships, school, and work, while still making a difference. He has to determine when to make sacrifices and when sacrificing goes to far. For, as the classic quote goes, "With great power comes great responsibility." 

The X-men have always been my favorite super hero team, because, unlike Spiderman, Superman, and Batman, they aren’t trying to be heroes, but trying to overcome real life struggles. As many of them are teens, they’re trying to find their place in the world, learning the balance between blending in and standing out. In a world where mutants are seen as less than human, they are all faced with prejudice at one time or another, choosing to cope how they see fit. Some want to blend in to society, while some want to stand out. The balance between changing who you are to fit in, and staying true to yourself when the world seems against you, is something many teens struggle with today, whether it be because of race, gender, religion, sexual preference, appearance, interests, and many more subtleties most people wouldn’t think would make a difference. Everyone has to grow up and find their place in the world, deciding who they are and what they stand for—super heroes and real life readers alike. 

So, then comes the question “Well, if you want to read about real world problems, why not read mainstream fiction? Why all the super powers?” There are many answers to that. It all comes down to personal preference, really. I’d rather read about a mutant who needs to learn to control their anger because they could accidently kill someone if they didn’t, than an ordinary girl like me who could get grounded. Realistic problems can hit too close to home. Comic books, as well as all works of sci-fi and fantasy, give us the illusion of an escape from the real world by showing it to us in a different way, allowing us to break down the defensive walls we put in place and look at human nature and ourselves from an artificial distance. 

Of Ringwraiths and Editing

Well, I officially went back over my work and read it from start to finish yesterday. It was hard at first, because my mind was yelling at me that it had heard the sentences a hundred times before and it wanted something new. I could wallow in self-pity, thinking my work is worthless (which did cross my mind), but then I went to watch the Lord of the Rings with my friends (which makes it into my top five all time favorite films-I’ve watched them at least ten times each), but I couldn’t make it through the entire first one because I’d memorized every line. So how do we get through that boring repetitiveness we’re innately against?

Ringwraiths. When those ringwraiths pull out their swords, or even just show up all creepy, covered in mist, something inside of me clenches. And when they start towards poor Frodo… It’s scary. It’s painful. It’s universal. Even though, not many of us can say we’ve come face to face with a ringwraith, we all know too well what fear and pain is. For me, the real strength of a story is in those scenes that are packed full of well-delivered emotion. Those are the ones that will draw you in time and time again.

All it took was coming across one emotion packed decently written scene in my own work, and I was able to read from there on out without glancing away from the screen. The only problem is, sometimes, I get so drawn in that I forget what I’m doing: editing.

I had to divide it up between editing for content (ie: is that the right response? Would this character really want to go there? Is she really smart enough to figure that out? Is he really dumb enough to push that button?) and editing for grammar/typos (ie: “I don’t think he was shitting his wallet… that “I” should be a “U”).  That being said, I don’t trust myself enough to catch every little mistake. I have a few fantastic friends (including my amazing father who corrects all the science part of my science fiction world) who have agreed to edit it for me. Hopefully that will work out, but the idea of paying a professional editor is still floating around in my mind as a strong possibility.