The Write Blog

Hemingway made sure he wrote no less than 500 words a day, every day.  Faulkner always drank whiskey when he wrote, while Balzac is known to have sometimes consumed more than ten cups of espresso per day while he was working.  Thomas Wolfe allegedly prefers to write while standing up.  Getting sloshed while working may not guarantee you’ll be the next Faulkner.  Still, you may find that you’ll produce better, more effective work under certain circumstances.  Here are a few suggestions for creating the best writing conditions for you:

1)      Tune In or Tune Out

Some people need absolute silence in order to work. Go into a quiet room, shut the door, and even turn on a fan or a white noise machine to reduce all ambient noise.

Some people prefer to have a little company while they work, perhaps with some inspiring music, or just the soothing murmur of a turned-low TV.  Whether or not noise is bothersome or helpful, you can easily manipulate your environment to suit your needs.  If you are working in public, headphones can offer gentle background noise or white out the hustle of your surroundings.   

2)      Easy on the Eyes

Your mother’s admonition that you’ll “strain your eyes” if you try to read or write in dim light is really just an old wives’ tale.  In fact, you’ll no more strain your eyes trying to work in dim light than you would strain your ears if you try to listen really hard.  However, dim light will make you have to work a little harder to see (but it won’t cause any damage to your eyes).  So, make sure you have just enough light for you to comfortably see what you’re doing.  Many modern laptops come with a little work light built-in.  Just check your manual to see if yours has one, and how to turn it on.  It comes in handy if you want to work on an overnight airplane flight, or while your spouse is trying to sleep next to you.

3)      Comfortable Creativity

Speaking of sleeping, I prefer to write while in bed, propped up against lots of pillows, with my computer on my lap.  If my body is comfortable, my mind is able to concentrate on the work at hand.  But perhaps other writers might find themselves too comfortable in my preferred position, and may wind up drifting off to sleep.  So, perhaps try sitting up at a desk or a table, back straight, feet flat on the floor, hands poised above the keyboard at the ready.  It may take some trial and error, but you’ll find your most comfortable writing position, probably somewhere in between my cozy-in-bed style and Wolfe’s standing up. 

All the great novelists will admit to at least one little habit that binds them to their work, which makes it their own.  Joan Didion says that: “when I’m near the end of the book, [I] sleep in the same room with it. . . . Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it.”  But before you get to those really personal idiosyncrasies, you have to start the basic creature comforts of writing.  And once you satisfy your sensory needs, your thoughts will turn inward and you’ll find yourself doing what you set out to do: write.

The key to good fiction is giving your readers a reason to keep going – little mysteries and mini-conflicts that add suspense and create tension. After all, if you feel like you know everything about a character in the first few pages, is there any real reason to waste time finding out what will happen to him?

Here’s what I mean:

Pete works at a pharmacy. He’s in his mid-twenties and he loves Asian cuisine and professional wrestling. He lives with his mother, but he wants to move out on his own when he saves up the money. He likes a girl at work named Myrna, but he’s afraid to ask her out on a date.

This is critical stuff: We have hints of a few conflicts (Pete is shy, but he’d like to go on a date with a coworker; Pete wants his own apartment, but he can’t afford it right now), and we know a little about his interests and goals. But, it’s dull, dull, dull. It’s an information dump – in a rush to introduce Pete, we’ve put our readers into a coma.

This one’s a little better:

Pete set down his plate of teriyaki and stared at Myrna from across the break room. Even dressed in her white, polyester lab coat (everyone who worked at the pharmacy was required to wear one), she was stunning.

I wonder if she likes wrestling, Pete thought. I’ve got two tickets to next week’s match. Maybe I should just ask her out. Just as friends. Oh, who am I kidding? I can’t even afford my own place – who wants to go out with a guy that still lives with his mother?

Myrna looked up and met his gaze. Pete snatched a newspaper and opened it to a random page, trying to look casual. That’s when he saw the advertisement: “Wrestlers needed for amateur match. Saturday night. First prize $5,000.”

The hints of conflict in the first version have become specific questions: Will Pete ask Myrna on a date? Will he put on tights, get in the ring, and win first prize? Focus on showing –revealing details through a character’s speech, thoughts, and actions – rather than simply telling the reader what’s important.

Even the world’s greatest musicians practice daily and spend time warming up before every single performance.  As a writer, you, too, need to work your creative muscles with some exercises designed to challenge your creativity, stretch your limits, and rev your writing engine. 

Spend no more than ten minutes on each of these prompts.  Set an alarm to snap you out of your writing frenzy, and then take a look at what you’ve created.  It could be trash, or it could be treasure.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s practice.  But it’s pretty fun practice.

1)      Every writer has a target audience, whether you are writing marketing material to a specific demographic or you are writing a novel you want your father to love. Take a few minutes to describe your target audience, working your way to your one ideal reader.  Is it a he or a she?  Is he reading while sipping a mocha latte?  What does he want to know; what’s important to him?  Does he tend to wear the same belt every day, even if it doesn’t match his outfit?  If you create your ideal reader in your head, you may almost feel like you are writing for just that person, and your copy will take on a great personal tone. 

2)      Select a random picture from a magazine or even from your family photo album.  Now try to recreate that picture in words.  Describe not only what you see, but what you sense: If there are people, what are the thoughts going through the people’s heads?  Is there drama, tension?  If it is a nature scene, get the reader to feel the sand between their toes, hear the rustle of the wind through the leaves, or shiver in the clammy mist that rises from the wet grass.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand words should be worth a picture, right?

3)      Pull out the thesaurus and randomly choose five words.  Now, whatever words you’ve got, try to write a short piece that uses all of them.  It’s a writer’s challenge that inspires some serious creativity and some very interesting short stories!

I’ll end with my favorite anecdote about a writing exercise similar to #3:

The urban legend goes that a college professor challenged his creative writing class to write a short essay containing each of the following elements:

• Religion
• Royalty
• Sex
• Mystery

The only A+ essay read:

“’My God,’ said the Queen.  “I’m pregnant!  I wonder whose it is?”

As a writer, you can’t always blame writer’s block for the blank page that’s staring back at you. And darn that stupid blinking cursor, taunting you as it reminds you over and over again that there’s still nothing on your page. As seemingly fun as it is to waste time instead of delving right into a project, procrastination is not bliss. Here are a few tips to help you fight through the rigors of apathetic postponement.

Always keep the main idea in mind. No matter the size of a project, refuse to let it overwhelm you. In one sentence, write down the purpose your text will serve. Keeping the main premise of your task in mind will keep you from venturing off onto unrelated tangents and/or becoming distracted. And the fewer the distractions, the faster you will finish.

The end is in sight. It always helps to visualize the end product…especially when you are working on a large project. Take it one word at a time always keeping in mind that each word written is one word closer to the end.

Just do it already. Stop regurgitating all of the excuses as to why you haven’t started yet, and simply start writing. Lucky for us, we can have first, second, third, and tenth drafts in the writing world. Even if your grammar and spelling aren’t perfect the first time around, the important thing is to just get something—anything—down on paper.

Reward yourself for a job well done. Everybody loves rewards, and what better way to motivate yourself than by knowing you can savor a glass of red wine, enjoy a round of golf, or shop ‘til you drop.

Lose the “I Work Better Under Pressure” mentality. This is one of my personal favorites. Instead of reminding ourselves that putting off an unwanted project until the last minute really makes us want to pull our hair out, we justify it with this overly used devil of a saying. Stop thinking this way, and just get to work. You just may find that a project without stress is much more enjoyable than “working under pressure.”

There is a lot to be said of brevity. Shakespeare wrote somewhat ironically through the mouthpiece of the long-winded Polonius in Hamlet that “brevity is the soul of wit.”

And William Strunk reminds us in the Elements of Style that “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

Excellent copywriting should be brief and vibrant; take care to remove any unneeded “filler” words and phrases. It is important to look for these filler words that drag your copy down, making them dull, drab, repetitive, and redundant.

One example of redundancy that rings clear in my mind comes from my elementary school grammar class: “I was home alone, all by myself.” Unless you’re using this sentence to create a character or style specific to your work, this is poor writing. To say that “I was home alone” necessarily implies that I am “all by myself,” making the second half of this sentence useless from a copywriter’s standpoint.

But what about those common phrases that can be easy to overlook – is something “absolutely essential,” or is it simply “essential?” “Basic fundamentals” are either “basics” or “fundamentals,” both able to stand alone quite nicely. Now consider “past experience,” “new innovations,” “qualified expert,” and “postpone until later” – there are better, briefer alternatives to all of these phrases.

A little hard-nosed editing will rid your copy of these superfluous filler verbs. In summarizing this already much-too-long blog about brevity, remember the words of Thomas Jefferson:

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.