Writing exercises stretch your mind and clear the noisy thoughts, and writer’s block. Don’t just write when the muse hits you, chances are you’ll write little, write regularly, daily even.

Writing is like any job; you need to do it regularly, to some sort of plan or routine, and the longer you do it, the better you’ll get.

Sometimes, however, you just can’t look at what you’ve been working on any longer and you need a break, or you just don’t know what to do with your character next. If that happens,  put it aside and try any of the exercises below. You might develop any of these exercises into pieces you can use in your large work.

Whatever you do, remember, the only way to become a writer is to write, A LOT!

 ”Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.”  Norman Mailer

 ”If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not — and the odds are against it — go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper — write.” J. B. Priestly

Try some of these exercises: 

1.   Play with a stranger: When you’re alone in a cafe, choose a person in the room and write about them. What do you notice? What’s their back story? What are they going to do next?

2.  “I remember…”: Begin with the line “I remember” (or “I don’t remember”), and write for fifteen minutes.

3.   Point of View shift: Develop characters and a plot for a short story. Then rewrite from a different character’s point-of-view.

4.   Opening lines: Using the following opening lines, write for 15 minutes:

• “As soon as I walked into the room, I knew my life was about to change forever.”
• “I would do absolutely anything for…”
• “Many years later…”
• “Every Summer, I…”
• “I couldn’t believe my eyes when…”

5.   Expand: Turn one of the pieces you wrote in number 4 into a piece of flash fiction, no more than 500 words. This is manageable. When you’re satisfied enough, have a look at what you’ve got. Can you expand on the events? The characters? I was once given a writing prompt for a short piece– a funeral. This short story about a funeral went on to become a novel of 80000 words.

6.   What if…?  Take a character and a situation (perhaps the same person from Exercise 1), and ask “what if…”  See where your creativity takes you.

7.   Play with pals: Pick ten people you know and write a one-sentence description for each of them. Use all of your senses to describe them. Can you use any of these characters? How about trying Exercise 6 on each of them?

8.   Play with the radio: Record five minutes of a talk radio show. Write down the dialog and add narrative descriptions of the speakers and actions as if you were writing a scene.

9.   Interview with a star: Write a fictional interview with a famous figure. Pick a magazine (Who Weekly, Zoo etc) and write in that style.

10.  Rewrite from a published book: Take a passage from a book, any book – good or bad -  and rewrite the passage in a different style such as noir, gothic romance, pulp fiction or horror story.

11.   Change POV: Take a piece of your writing that you have written in first person and rewrite it in third person, or vice-versa. You can also try this exercise changing tense, narrators, or other stylistic elements.

12.  Choose a daily writing goal: Yes, daily. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit (although 1 day to break it) so just do it every day. Will you write 500 words a day? 1000 words? Or will you write 1 hour a day? Or perhaps 2? On some days it might be 20 minutes because of other commitments – it doesn’t matter, just write every day.

13.  One Word: One word, 60 seconds. Try it out.

If all of these fail, pop on Dexter or The Tudors – they’re sure to get your creative juices flowing!

Alternatively, here’s some more help from coach Maggie Mistal.

When you’re having one of THOSE days, why not partake in a wee bit of schadenfreude. We all simply need to know that there have been many MANY before us who had it hard (and then hit it big).

So let’s all rejoice, folks, because even the biggest authors were once considered losers, which proves that, sometimes, it’s just a matter of opinion.

NB: Some of these might be nothing more than urban myth, but to that I say, whatever, I’m happy to believe these stories; they made my day.

1. The Diary of Anne Frank
Rejected 15 times
“Very dull,” with unfamiliar characters who bickered like a typical family. Moreover, by the time the manuscript had been sent to Knopf in 1950, the subject was no longer “timely”. The reader’s report has been archived, along with many other embarrassing rejections, in the Knopf archive at the University of Texas. Some excellent rejections in these files include: Sylvia Plath—“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”; and Jack Kerouac—“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”. In all fairness, Knopf has published numerous Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, so they didn’t always miss the winners. But in the case of the diary of a Jewish girl in hiding during WWII, they missed the golden egg. Doubleday became the lucky publisher of the diary n 1952.

2. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by  J. K. Rowling
Rejected 9 times
The story has been told many times, but is well worth a repeat as it turned out to be the proverbial Goose that laid multiple golden eggs, and a franchise, with merchandise, and an author-owned website. If there are any editors and publishers with regrets, it would certainly be the dozen or so who rejected the first Harry Potter. At the time, Bloomsbury was a new publishing company and, according to some sources, on the brink of closure until the company’s chairman, Nigel Newton, took home Rowling’s manuscript and gave it to his eight year old daughter, Alice, to read. Well, give THAT girl a job! Her assessment changed the lives of a few folks, including author JK Rowling, who’s now richer than the Queen, even if her advance at the time was only £2,500. Nice work, Alice. In all fairness to new writers, what needs to be taken into account is that Rowling had an agent at the time. So how did she manage that? She used black binding. That’s right. The query was rejected when it arrived because the agency did not represent children’s books. And despite everything we writers know about NEVER deviating from submission guidelines, in this case, it’s exactly that deviation that made the office manager pick the book from the rejected pile. She read it, showed the boss and… Give that girl a pay rise.

Shenanigans at the 4077 M*A*S*H*

3. M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker
Rejected 21 times
It was a book? Yes, it was. This became quite the franchise: First there was a book, then a movie, then a TV show that, despite the number of times I have seen it repeated on TV, I still managed to sit through a four-day MASH marathon.

4. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Rejected 18 times
Look, it’s a story about a seagull so you can’t blame a publisher, can you? I fancy myself as a bird, but not a seagull. That said, no university student’s bookshelf would be complete without a copy of JLS because, let’s face it, it’s a short version of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. You know, don’t go with the flow, try something new, follow a better crowd, just cos you were brought up to scavenge doesn’t mean you have to stick with it. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was signed by Macmillan in 1972 and went on to sell 1 million copies in the first year alone.

5. Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen
Rejected 140 times
Jack Canfield must be laughing in his Chicken Soup packet. Chicken Soup for the Soul, and its 65-book franchise that have been translated into more than 30 languages is the how-to of how-to anthologies. How do you deal with 140 rejections, though? You need a strong stomach—thank God for the chicken soup. Sorry, had to.

Carrie IS NOT HAPPY!

6. Carrie by Stephen King
Rejected 30 times
Not only was Carrie rejected, Stephen King’s first four novels were too. It’s hard to imagine where horror fiction would be today without King. Where would Mean Girls be without Carrie? Where would Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer be—the one when good witch Willow turned very bad? The rejection story goes that after King had been rejected 30 times, he literally threw the manuscript in the bin (you could do that before computers) and his wife fished it out. Carrie was eventually published, and King has subsequently published 75 novels, novellas, screenplays, and non-fiction books.

7. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Rejected 121 times
I’m seeing a theme here—publishers, at some point, simply hated books about personal development.

8. Animal Farm by George Orwell
Orwell’s satirical look at communism and power has not been out of print since it was released in 1945, thanks, in part, to school booklists the world over. Animal Farm was famously rejected by then director of Faber and Faber, TS Eliot, himself a poet (please read, amongst others, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock). Eliot found the story unconvincing and its politics unacceptable in the day’s political climate. The (very) long letter from Eliot to Orwell is incredibly considered; Eliot certainly didn’t just throw a standard “thanks but no thanks” rejection letter at Orwell. “We agree that it is a distinguished piece of writing,” he wrote, “that the fable is very skilfully handled, and that the narrative keeps one’s interest on its own plane—and— that is something very few authors have achieved since Gulliver.” Knopf rejected this one as well, and is said to have claimed that it’s “impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” Fair enough.

9. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Methinks TS Eliot had it in for Orwell, because he also rejected Down and Out in Paris and London while he was a manuscript reader at Faber and Faber. He famously said of the book of short tales of woe, “We did find it of very great interest, but I regret to say that it does not appear to me possible as a publishing venture.” The book was picked up by Penguin and sold more than 50,000 copies in the 1940s. Not bad for a book that was, much like a Seinfeld episode, about nothing albeit with poverty and misery and very little humour.

10. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Rejected 5 times
I added this one simply because I don’t blame those five publishers. If I were an agent or publisher today, I would pass too. Seriously, with such a cheesy opening line as “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul…” I know it’s completely uncool to admit it, but each time I pick up the book, I struggle to get past the first paragraph. So, despite its ensuing popularity, I might agree with the publisher who said of Lolita: “… I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.” HEAR HEAR!

 So let us go now, you and I, and aim for a tonne of rejections for the remainder of this year–the more we’re rejected, the more the likelihood of publication.

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU’RE DONE?

Welcome back to Writing 101, where we look at the elements that make up a story.  If you haven’t read the first four parts of this five part series,, you might like to start at Part 1 – IDEAS

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
-Truman Capote 

There are two phases to creating a novel: writing and revising. Both are equally important if you want to accomplish a work of art, but in all honesty, revising a manuscript is hell because you can keep going and going and going….. 

So how do you know when it’s done?
Firstly, your characters should have finished their journey, you’ve tied up the loose ends that you want to tie up, and resolved the main conflict. The story feels done.

If you’re like me, you might write the last paragraph well before the manuscript is finished—you may simply have a feel for how you want it to end and when the muse takes you, write away. But, of course, be prepared to change it if the story takes a different road, because a novel is often a leap of faith for its author; you can’t guarantee how your ending will go. Sometimes things turn out exactly the way you planned them, sometimes they are not too far off, and sometimes your characters may have taken the story somewhere you never expected. This happened with Stephen King’s Misery. King had planned for his hero, Paul Sheldon, to die at the end, but the character proved himself resourceful enough to outwit his insane captor. Just let things play out as you see fit. Sometimes the new ending is more worthwhile than the place you intended.

Ok, what do you do after you have completed your first draft? 

1. REST
Once you’ve finished writing the first draft, take a break for a few weeks—go outside, visit your friends to show them you’re still alive, read a book just for the hell of it. Whatever you do, file the manuscript away and don’t be tempted to look at it for a few weeks, or even a few months.

Resting allows your mind to recuperate and helps you to distance yourself from your work. This is important as you enter the destructive portion of the writing process: revision.

2. REVISE, REVISE, REVISE
You’re ready to start with the second half of writing. Everyone will have a different approach. Some writers are very meticulous with their first draft and will write a paragraph then revise it before they move on. Others tend not to concern themselves with spelling and grammar at this early stage. I belong to the latter camp, the ones who want to get the story down on paper without worrying about the things I can get back to later. Trust me, if you get bogged down with the minutia too soon, you’ll miss the forest for the trees—that is, at your second draft, you should concentrate more on:

Plot holes—these are gaps in the logic of the story that will bewilder your reader. It’s expected that If you find them, don’t feel bad about them. Everyone makes mistakes the first time around. It’s best that you catch these plot holes now before anyone else can read your novel.

Dangling storylines—you may have introduced some plot threads that you didn’t resolve. Now is the time to fix them if you want to. You may not want to, but keep in mind that this may be disconcerting for the average reader who likes to see nicely-resolved storylines.

Out-of-character moments—your characters may abruptly talk or act in ways that’s completely unlike them, often in service of the plot. Go back to what you know of your character and decide if this works. This may mean having to rewrite elements of the character throughout the manuscript, or just fix the odd slip up.

Missing scenes or unclear passages. Sometimes, your plot a quick scene might act as a bridge to clarify the plot. Take the time to rewrite and clarify anything that’s missing.

Cut down the non-essentials—another important task in editing your novel is to trim it down. As the old writing adage states: omit needless words. 

In his book On Writing, Stephen King states that a novel can and should be cut by at least 10%, many others will say that it’s 30%. So be ruthless. Your story will come out leaner and move at a faster pace.

Do your best to remove unnecessary adverbs
A controversial subject, in my opinion. My preference is to nix lazy adverbs—these are the ones where you could replace them with better meaning, but decide not to because it’s just too hard. You’re a writer, so write well and write deliberately.

Do a global search of words that end in “ly” by using the find/replace option. Make sure you add a space after “ly” in the ‘find’ cell so that you look for adverbs. You could probably just replace all of your adverbs but it’s your choice how you plan to treat them. Decide which adverbs add value and which ones don’t. For the ones you don’t need, find stronger verbs, or use action to reveal the character.

Some examples of lazy adverbs and their alternatives:

• Jeff closed the door loudly. OR
• Jeff slammed the door.
  
• “Stop bouncing the ball inside,” Jeff admonished angrily. OR
• “Stop bouncing the ball inside,” Jeff yelled.

Consider removing or revising overlong description
John Steinbeck versus Ernest Hemingway—read both to understand this. In addition, decide what is really important to convey your meaning.

Get rid of useless minor characters and irrelevant back story
Anything that doesn’t contribute to the novel must go. You will know them when you read them. Back story is important, but you must decide what is needed to propel the story or the characters.

For example: Do we need to know that when the protagonist was three, her father used to take her to the playground surrounded by ghost gums and housing commission flats every day at lunchtime? Yes, maybe we do, because that’s where she was abducted when she was fifteen. Or perhaps it serves to show a committed father, or even a tired one.

I identify very strongly with the idea that you’re in your early 30s and you’ve got no idea whether this is going to pay off or not – the writing thing – and if it doesn’t, what are you going to do? You’ve told everybody that is what you’re trying, and it feels that you’re walking a plank and you’ve just got to keep going because there’s a load of people waving cutlasses at you!”
- Nick Hornby

3. BETA READERS
Once you’ve done all you can for your novel, there is one last thing to do before submitting it to a publisher: let others read it. This is a good way to find out your novel’s strengths and weaknesses before you introduce it to a wider audience.

But not just anyone will do. It’s crucial to select people who you can trust will help you with your career as an author. There are some good rules to follow when selecting your beta readers—these are the ones who aren’t necessarily writers, but know a good story (or a bad one) when they read it. Don’t ask: 

• Your partner—regardless how much you love each other and how well you know each other, nobody likes their partner to give constructive feedback. Don’t believe me? Try it.
• Mum and dad—do I need to explain this one? Mum and dad love you unconditionally and ANYTHING you EVER write is going to be GREAT.
• People who don’t read. They’ll take forever, may not finish at all, and you will resent them for it.

When you find your readers:

• Give them a deadline—3-4 weeks is usually good but discuss it with them – they’re doing you a favour so you need to be flexible, but also respect your needs.
• Tell them to concentrate on the macro, not the micro—forget about spelling and grammar unless something stands out. You want them to tell you what works, what doesn’t, what’s confusing.
• Give your reader a hard copy unless they NEVER EVER read anything other than ebooks.

When they have finished reading, treat them to a meal or a few drinks to go over their feedback. Being a beta is hard work, and can be stressful—it’s not just about reading a book.

REDRAFT
With all the feedback in hand, reread and rework your manuscript. Remember that you have the final say, but don’t be too precious—if more than one person has made the same comment, it’s likely that there is a problem and you need to take a closer look . 

“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. I had pieces that were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.”
–Erica Jong

After completing all these steps, break out the champagne and throw yourself a party.

You’ve just finished your first manuscript!

NOW WHAT?
Just when you thought it was all over, it’s now time to find an agent and a publisher, which means you will need a synopsis and a query letter. We’ll talk about those next stages later on. But in the meantime, happy writing!

Welcome back to Writing 101, where we look at the elements that make up a story.  If you haven’t read the first three posts, you might like to start at Part 1 – IDEAS

Scarlett - From Vixen to Champion

 

Even as you’re creating your story, you should also be forming your characters, particularly your protagonists and antagonists. The character arc describes your character’s emotional journey throughout the novel. Your character’s arc greatly resembles the plot structure and usually moves with it. In character-driven novels, the character arc IS the plot.  In a nutshell… your character starts at one point and ends somewhere new. Scarlett O’Hara, in Margaret  Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, is a prime example of a character arc – Scarlett starts out selfish and precocious and by the end of the story, she has learned some truths about herself.

START: What is your character’s inner condition at the start of the story?
Is your character:

•  Insular and cynical?
•  Selfish and sarcastic?
•  Shy and frightened?
•  Happy go lucky?

END: What is your character’s inner condition at the end of the story?
Is your character:

• Open-minded and optimistic?
• Caring?
• Friendly and trusting?
• Miserable? 

THE 5 LEVELS OF THE CHARACTER ARC

Writer, Jeff Gerke, describes 5 levels of the character arc in his book, Plot versus Character:

1. The Initial Condition – as described above, it’s your character’s condition or state at the beginning of the story.  It’s also where we’re introduced to the problem that needs to be sorted out by the end.
2. The Inciting Incident – the event or conflict that moves your character in a different direction.
3. The Escalation – the events, decisions and reactions that move the character along towards the problem’s resolution.
4. The Moment of Truth – the character is forced to decide to change or not, and this decision will determine your book’s happy, or unhappy, ending.
5. The Final State – your character’s condition or state at the end of the story. 

I LOVE YOU, MARY SUE

Stephen King has said a lot about writing, but his quote about character should be a mantra:

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. - Stephen King

First, build a character that the reader will care about—tell us who they are, what drives them, what they’ve faced, who they care about—then drag them through hell.

You know you’re onto a winner if you’ve created an unlikable character who elicits that response. Think of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. He’s a completely vile character, who wants only what’s good for him, but Tolkien has shown him with real, human flaws, so we’re able to relate to him. Just like Frodo, we come to care for him and don’t want any real harm to come to him.

A good way to create conflict for your character is to have them choose between making a good choice and making a bad choice. On the other hand, if you want to create real tension, have your character choose between a bad choice and a terrible choice.

Having fleshed-out characters with flaws and desires is a great way to hook your readers and make them turn page after page to find out what happens next.  

Here are the elements to keep in mind:

1. Exposition/background—your character’s description and back story. This encompasses essential things about the character that the audience needs to know.

How much back story is enough? You should limit it only to information that’s relevant to the novel, otherwise you’ll just cut it out during the editing phase. So while your protagonist’s occupation as a retired detective is important to your crime novel, you can leave out what his grandparents did in the 1940s if it adds nothing to the story.   

2. Expression of desire/motive—in order for your character to be compelling, they must want something badly enough to act on it. If your motive isn’t compelling enough for your characters to step out of their comfort zone, chances are your story won’t be compelling enough for your readers to follow.

One fine example of a stated motive comes Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: Captain Ahab’s desire to hunt and kill the eponymous white whale for taking his leg. 

3. Internal weaknesses and external conflicts—In order to be three-dimensional, your characters must have flaws. Since nobody’s perfect, a character without weaknesses (see the “Mary Sue” test) strains disbelief and becomes difficult for your audience to relate with. Strange as it sounds, it’s a character’s weaknesses and not their strengths that make us care about them.

FLAWS? What, me?

To make your story compelling, your character’s flaws should make it harder for them to reach their goals. Their internal weaknesses should either cause or worsen external conflicts, often without them knowing it.

1. Realisation—At some point of your character’s journey, they will gradually come to realise something about themselves, a vital lesson that changes their perspective and allows them to make life-changing decisions. A good tip is to let your character’s realisation coincide with the story’s climax.

 For example: Your heroine realises that her low self-esteem is the reason she sabotages her own chances to further her career. She decides to assert herself in the next corporate meeting.

2. Resolution—In the end, the character either succeeds in getting his goal or gets something else. Regardless, they have learned something from their journey and grown from their original state. The point is for the character to grow emotionally regardless of what happens externally. This is known as catharsis.

 Never underestimate what a good character can do for your writing career. A character with a good following can form the basis for a string of novels.



And now for Part 3 of Writing 101. You can find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

In Part 3, we look at the Plot Structure, including an outline of the traditional three-act story structure.

There are many detractors of the three-act structure, that it’s limitingbut it lays the framework for a recognisable story arc, especially for the writer who is just starting out. Study your favourite films, especially popular thrillers and action movies, and you’ll see the classic story arc in play.

THE PLOT STRUCTURE

Now that you have the elements of a novel down, it’s time come up with your story. Now, there are plots and there are plots. Some novels seem to have no plot at all, but you’ll rarely find this with popular fiction, which tends to be driven by plot. So that’s what we’ll talk about here.

A standard plot is usually composed of three parts: beginning, middle and end, called the three-act structure. These three acts are always present in a novel but don’t necessarily have to be in order.

First things first, look for the conflict. Whatever you decide to write about, make sure you can identify the situation and the conflict. Both must be present to make an interesting story.

The situation is your Point A, the story’s status quo, the space where your characters currently find themselves. Conflict is an event that challenges, disrupts, or reverses that status quo. A good conflict shakes your character out of their tree and motivates them to move towards Point B. We’ll give examples in a moment.

Never mistake your character’s situation for their conflict. No matter how good your situation is, whether your character is about to perform a death-defying leap out of an airplane or is dying from a rare disease and is contemplating suicide, it’s still only Point A. Find your conflict, something that interrupts their situation and forces the character to act: say, a sudden phone call from a desperate relative or an experimental cure found half-way around the world. The conflict is the event that forces your character out of whatever situation they find themselves in, and propels.

 The Three-Act Structure – also known as The Hero’s Journey

ACT 1: The Beginning
Here you set up the plot, introducing your characters, their current situation, and any details that will become important later on in the story. 

The first act ends with the introduction of the conflict, something that prompts the characters to act towards a goal.

For example, in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather:
Situation: Michael Corleone wants nothing to do with his father’s criminal empire.

Conflict: When Michael’s father is wounded in an assassination attempt, he goes after the people responsible, igniting a violent mob war.

In JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
Situation: Harry is invited to the Quidditch World Cup.

Conflict:The fun comes to an end with the appearance of Death Eaters and Voldemort’s symbol is emblazoned across the sky. Is Voldemort back?

ACT 2: The Middle
The second act of the story features the rising action, showing the characters struggling towards their objectives. Complications arise, the stakes become higher, and the tale becomes more exciting. The journey can be marked with failures or false leads. Generally, things get worse before they get better.

The Godfather:
Rising Action: Michael escapes to Sicily to hide from a vengeful mob, only to face more violence and tragedy. He eventually accepts his fate and returns to America to lead his father’s empire.

Harry Potter
Rising Action: The Tri-Wizard tournament is being held at the Hogwarts School of Wizardry. The students are excited at the prospect of being chosen the school’s representative. Despite his age Harry Potter’s name is called as one of two representatives for Hogwarts. The Wizards face a series of frightening tasks, which increase in intensity, ending with Harry and Cedric Diggery finding a portkey that takes them to a cemetery when they meet Voldemort.

ACT 3: The End
The most prominent feature of the third act is known as the climax, where a final challenge is faced and the characters either get or do not get what they want. All major conflicts are resolved, although not always neatly. The end may include a final fight scene between the hero and the villain, a race to save a loved one from danger, or a final, pivotal conversation between the main characters. As it’s difficult to sustain excitement for a long period of time, keep the climax short and sweet.

TheGodfather
Climax: Michael assassinates the heads of New York’s Five Families along with their henchmen. 

Harry Potter
Climax: Voldemort kills Cedric Diggery. Harry returns to Hogwarts using the portkey, bringing Cedric’s body back with him.

Lastly, the novel may end with denouement or the falling action. The purpose is to provide the reader with catharsis, or a release of emotion. According to Russian playwright Anton Chekov, one of the principles of drama is that if you introduce a loaded gun in the first act, it must be fired by the third. In other words, you should tie up all the loose ends in your story and come up with some closure for all conflicts you began in the first act.

The Godfather
Denouement: Michael expands his empire and assumes complete control of the Corleone Family.

Harry Potter
Denouement: Harry announces that Voldemort has returned, more powerful than ever. Voldemort summons his followers. The Ministry of Magic refuses to act on this news but Dumbledore starts regrouping the old Order that once fought Voldemort.

See you next time for Part 4 of Writing 101 – The Character Arc

Welcome back to Novel Writing 101. If you missed part 1, you can find it here: Part 1

In Part 2, we’re taking a closer look at the elements that go into a novel.

WHAT’S IN A NOVEL?

There are five main elements (depending on who you speak to) that summarise a story’s classic three-act structure (which we’ll discuss in detail in Part 3 next week). Knowing these elements can help you uncover what areas you need to work on to make a complete and satisfying story.  

1. PLOT 

Remember the old school book report? Plot was one of the main elements that you had to report on—simply put, the plot is the flow of events, how the story moves from Point A to Point B or from Act 1 to Act 3.

Creating your plot is both one of most exciting and enjoyable parts of writing your novel, and the most daunting. There are so many stories. Which one do you write? How do you know that someone else will want to read it? Ah, the eternal questions that nobody can answer until you write it and send it out to publishers and agents.

Just keep in mind that you’re writing a story, not a weather report. A weather report is just a chronicle of events that happen, this then that, regardless of what people want. But what people do when faced by that weather is the story. 

What piques your interest? What do you know about or want to learn about? 

The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.
– Anne Rice 

2. SETTING

 Setting covers many aspects of your story, including time and place. When and where does your story happen? The possibilities here are limitless—you can set your novel in a modern city, a futuristic alien dystopia, a farm, a medieval fantasy realm or even in Victorian England. Steampunk is a relatively new literary genre that sets stories in Victorian England, incorporating futuristic elements.

Play around with setting. You can set your story in multiple locations around the world like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, or in a single room like Jean Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos (although remember that it is a play).

Setting is about more than just location; setting is also the mood—what do you want your reader to feel? Does the weather play a role? Is everything damp and moldy because it never stops raining? Twilight’s small town, Forkes, is necessarily dreary and rainy for obvious reasons, and this is reflected in Bella’s somber mood, her pale skin, and the town’s other inhabitants. You can really sense this typical small town in the US Pacific North West. The setting, in this case, is like another character.

This is true of so many classic stories. I read John Steinbeck over and over as a teen, but happily skipped the first 20 pages or so of description. Really, there’s only so much I need to read about hay bales and dustbowls. Yet, when I think of East of Eden, I can see the Salinas Valley, even though I’ve never been there. The same can be said of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo, the fictional setting of many of his books. If you want to learn more about setting, I would recommend reading books by both of these authors.

Whatever your setting, be sure to describe the time and place in enough detail so the reader doesn’t get lost, while leaving a little to the imagination. Click here to listen to an excellent podcast about setting from the Odyssey Workshops. 

3. CHARACTERISATION

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters.
A character is a caricature.
–Ernest Hemingway 

Characters drive the story. You can have the best plot but a novel is really about people (or hobbits, elves, aliens, dogs, spiders or pigs). While you can create and populate your fictional world with whatever characters you like, your job is to give them life; they must be real and authentic. As Hemingway said, it’s your job to have a built-in bullshit detector.

Here are a few tips to get you going:

a. Create a character “bible” before you start writing so that you know how your characters will think and act in various circumstances. The “bible” will include information about their beliefs, culture, education, and upbringing. An interesting tip is to then complete the Mary Jane Litmus Test to see if you’ve simply created a “perfect” character, instead of a real character. Give your character vulnerabilities, as these will be the basis of a lot of conflict.

If you’re writing about a character, if he’s a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability
I don’t think he’ll be as interesting to the reader.
–Stan Lee 

b. Not all characters have to be likeable. In fact, it’s important to have a balance. Plus, your main protagonist may also have negative characteristics, it’s only natural. Let’s use Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker as an example—initially he is whiny and self-centered. Clearly, by the time we reach the story’s end, this changes. And that, my friends, is what we call the Character Arc (which we will go into later). 

c. Create character foils. A foil is a contrasting character that shows up particular traits of another character, especially the main protagonist, without the author making it too obvious. If one character is a sloth and leaves clothes all over the loungeroom floor and last night’s dishes on the sofa, the foil may walk in grumbling and start to clean things up. We see character foils a lot in comedy films: Laurel and Hardy—the fool and the hardass.

Other foils include:

• Romeo and Juliet’s Mercutio and Romeo. Mercutio is loud and brash while Romeo is always moping around and lamenting life.
• LJ Smith’s The Vampire Diaries, Damon is the evil foil to Stefan’s goodness.
• In Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy is Harry’s foil. Draco is mean and selfish, a contrast to poor Harry.  
• Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are classic foils. One is pudgy will the other is thin and tall. Holmes follows wild clues while Watson is more conventional. In this case, Watson is the perfect foil and Arthur Conan Doyle did not have to tell his readers: “Look at Sherlock Holmes, boy does he like to leap after strange ideas…” it’s completely obvious that this is Sherlock’s approach because Watson is the opposite.

d. Give each character a distinct “voice,” their own manner of speaking and choice of words. Dialogue is one of your most important tools for showing your character’s traits. Whether the dialogue is internal (thoughts) or external, it should be clear that it belongs to one particular character.

To create unique voices:

• Research dialects – these include regional dialects as well as the dialects between generations
• Listen to how people speak – remember that people don’t necessarily speak in complete sentences. Are you writing about a teenager who speaks in text speak?

“Like, OMG, I totally ROFL’ed.”

• Beware of stereotypes – the teen who speaks in text speak can be funny, but it’s also a bit of a stereotype. On the other hand, a princess who swears tells the reader a lot about her character, as does a trucker who speaks the Queen’s English.

 e. Give each of your primary characters her own motivation. Your story revolves around characters wanting something badly enough to act towards it. So, before you do anything else, ask yourself, what does my character want and what is she prepared to do to get it? 

First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him.
–Ray Bradbury 

4.            POINT-OF-VIEW (POV)

Point of View is the perspective from which you will tell your story. Is it told from the point-of-view of the principal character? Or do we see it unfold through the eyes of one of the secondary characters? Or from an omniscient point-of-view? Pick the perspective that best suits your story.

There are generally two kinds of points-of-view (excluding second person, which is very awkward to read for an entire novel but is a unique style):

a. Third-person—the story is told by a narrator standing outside of the action (although in the story), referring to all characters as “he”,” she”, or “they”, including the main character. You can tell the story from one or multiple narrators. Literary fiction will often use only a single narrator while popular fiction generally change POV. In any case, make sure it is absolutely clear who the POV character is or the reader will get muddled. I recommend using one POV at a time, preferably changing POVs clealy with a section break or new chapter.

There are two types of third person POV:

Third person limited—The story is told through one character’s eyes. We know and see only what this character knows and sees. For example, if the POV character is walking down the street, there is no way for them to know that there is a drunk lurking around the next corner wearing a yellow sweater and carrying a shiny wrench, ready to knock her on the head. The narrator, and the reader, can only know this AFTER the black sweater character jumps out and attacks (unless she passes out, in which case we’ll never know).  

Third person omniscient—This is the bird’s eye view, or the all-knowing God POV. Many will tell you to avoid this. I agree. An omniscient narrator was de rigueur in 19^th and very early 20^th century literature, but is rarely tolerated now as it tends to be confusing and, well, Godlike. A good example is Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. 

b. First-person—The story is told through the eyes of the narrator who is also a character, referring to herself as “I”. While there’s generally less freedom from the first-person perspective, it allows the reader to, literally, get into your character’s head, revealing more about how she thinks and feels. A crime story is a lot creepier when told through the first person voice of the criminal. Have a read of American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. This book is a perfect example of first narrative, and is chilling.

5. THEME

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.
– Isabel Allende 

The theme is what your story is ultimately about, its message and its deeper meaning. This can be a comment on society’s changing mores, growing up, good versus evil, or man’s need to give meaning to everything.  

What themes and ideas drive you?  

You don’t have to think of a theme before you start your story. Often, your message comes out on its own as you work. If you start without a theme, focus on the story first and then explore what it’s trying to say later on during the rewrite. 

When I write, the overarching theme seems to be of finding independence, the power in discovering your voice, and coming of age—much like many Young Adult (YA) books.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.
– Herman Melville

 Stay tuned for Part 3 of Writing 101 when we delve deeply into Plot Structure.

In the first of this five-part series about writing a novel, we talk about the very first  step – the IDEA.

Starting your first novel is exciting—imagine world building, creating characters from thin air or based on people you’ve known or have encountered on the street. It seems that character building comes easily for some; we’re surrounded by character all the time, right? But what about the story? The theme? The very idea you want to write about? How do you write 300 pages out of nothing? That white screen and flashing cursor are an unexplored frontier, and you are its pilgrim (or its gold digger—I won’t judge).

There are tools that you can download that will help you come up with story ideas—fiction idea generators. Or you can use writing prompts and story starters that you can find on this site. These are all useful to get you started so you can pump out the first few hundred words until your juices truly start to flow. Beware not to get too fixated on software though—you can waste a lot of time looking for the perfect software to help you with any stage of your writing practice. I’ve talked about them here. The best software is the least intrusive and doesn’t take a month to learn, especially when you’re trying to hash out the story concept.

Regarless how you write, you still need soemthing to write about. Along the way, there are a few steps that could make the slog towards completing your novel just that bit easier, and will help keep you from getting lost.

 Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way. I have to go and fetch them. I know no work
manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.  ~A. A. Milne  

First things first: you need the seed of an idea.

 1.      Where to find Novel Ideas

“Where do your ideas come from?” That’s a common question writers ask and are asked. How do they weave fantastic tales from seemingly ordinary and even disparate situations.  Hugo and Nebula award winning writer, Orson Scott Card, says “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”

Best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman says it best: “You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.” 

Here are some ways to find ideas for your next story:

1. Look around you—it pays to be observant of your surroundings; you can get ideas from anywhere.

• Go out on walks and listen to conversations coming from back yards or open front doors;
• Meet with friends and listen to their stories;
• Eavesdrop on conversations in your local café;
• Visit historical places and wonder about the ghosts that might be there still;
• Read a lot and read widely—if you don’t normally read historical romance, give it a try. The same applies to urban fantasy. You never know what ideas a different genre might incite. Stephen King got his inspiration for his series The Dark Tower from the poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came as well as his love of spaghetti westerns;
• Stroll through the park. If you’re observant, you’ll catch something that will spark your interest;
• Listen to people at work—it’s amazing what people talk about in an open environment; even snippets of conversations can be a story starter—the TV show The Office is all about the boring old goings on in a pretty ordinary office; the writers have mined it to find the gold;
•  Go to the library and look through newspapers and magazines for headlines that pop out at you. If you’re lucky enough to have a bigger, older library near you, see if you can look at the digitised copies of old newspapers. The advertising alone will get your mind going.

2. Look behind you—you don’t even have to look far to find worthwhile stories. Search your memories for interesting events in your past. Talk to your grandparents or their relatives. My parents are crazy storytellers and have excellent memories. Mum loves to recount the story of dad’s proposals, first when she was 13, then when she was 17 and, finally, at 24.

What if you’re looking through an old stack of photos, and you see a wedding photo. The bride is your mum, but you’ve never seen the groom before. Strange, because your parents have never been married before, or so you think.

What if nobody in your family knew how to drive, making getting around a real drag. Can’t you imagine the arguments and the laughs? It may not be the entire story, but it’s back story, right?

What if your family doesn’t even exist and they’re just holographic projections? Sure, there are tonnes of holes in the idea (like, how do they hug or eat or sit down?) but you could work that out. 3.  Look within you—Write what you know. New writers hear this all the time. It’s a well-worn cliché, but it’s no less true. There’s a wealth of subject matter from your job, your hobbies, your interests, your social circle, even the kind of shoes you wear. Again, you can mine yourself for story threads or for background information and character details. Build from what you know well.

John Grisham drew from his own experience as a lawyer to write great legal thrillers such as The Firm and The Pelican Brief. Forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs has developed memorable characters and creepy thrillers (and a much loved TV spinoff, Bones) thanks to her job. 

Try these ideas next time you’re short of ideas:

1. Talk to a family member and ask them to tell you their most memorable story. Take detailed notes, including dialogue and the way the story is related to you. Be perceptive.
   Turn this into a story of any length—flash fiction or short story, you decide.
2. Sit in a park, café, or at work and write a full page of anything you hear and see.
   Is there a story on the page? Write it and see what happens.

Click here for Part 2 of Writing 101: The Elements of a Novel

Yes, I said it… Book designers are a pain in the ass, what with their useless Apple Macintosh computers and talk about Pantone this and leading that. BUT they sure do make pretty books. As an ex-production controller, designers were my nemeses.

How much extra for 6 colours?
What if one of those colours is metallic? Glitter? Holographic? (Yes, I worked in children’s publishing for a while)
Let’s make it just 4 colour, but I want flocking. 

TheAustralian Publishers Association (APA) announced the winners of its book design awards on the 20th. How many do you have on your bookshelf? How many do you agree with?

APA Book Design Awards winners for 2011

Best Designed Book of the Year Quay: Food Inspired by Nature(Peter Gilmore, Murdoch Books) designed by Reuben Crossman

Best Designed Cover of the Year Hand Me Down World(Lloyd Jones, Text) cover designer W H Chong

Best Designed Children’s Fiction Book The Midnight Zoo (Sonya Hartnett, Viking) Tony Palmer

Best Designed Children’s Cover of the Year The Staring Owl (Luke Edwards, Omnibus) cover designer Luke Edwards

Best Designed Children’s Picture Book The Tomorrow Book(Jackie French, HarperCollins) designer Natalie Winter

Best Designed Children’s Non-fiction Book (joint winners) Wicked Warriors and Evil Emperors(Alison Lloyd, illustrated by Terry Denton, Puffin) designer Adam Laszczuk

Best Designed Children’s Non-fiction Book (joint winners) Somme Mud: Younger Readers’ Edition (Will Davies, Random House) designer Liz Seymour, Seymour Design

Best Designed Children’s Series The ‘Moorehawke’ trilogy, Vols II & III (Celine Kiernan, A&U) designer Bruno Herfst & Elise Hurst

Best Designed Young Adult Book Graffiti Moon(Cath Crowley, Pan Macmillan) designer Melanie Feddersen of i2i Designs

Best Designed Fiction Book Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey, A&U) cover designer Lisa White, internal designer Bookhouse

Best Designed Cookbook
Quay: Food Inspired by Nature(Peter Gilmore, Murdoch Books) designer Reuben Crossman

Best Designed Specialist Illustrated Book Mari Funaki: Objects(Jane Devery, NGV) designer Dirk Hiscock

Best Designed General Illustrated Book Shack(Simon Griffiths, Lantern) designer Allison Colpoys

Best Designed Literary Fiction Book Hand Me Down World(Lloyd Jones, Text) designer W H Chong

Best Designed Non-fiction Book    A Life in Frocks (Kelly Doust, Murdoch Books) designer Zoe Sadokierski

Best Designed Reference & Scholarly Book ‘Pocket History’ series(various authors, Murdoch Books) designer Jenny Grigg

Best Designed Secondary Education Book The Food Book(Leanne Compton, OUP) designer Regine Abos

Best Designed Primary Education Book The Bug Club (various authors, Pearson) designer Kath Greenough, Lisa Austin

Best Designed Tertiary and Further Education Book News as it Happens(Stephen Lamble, OUP) cover designer Regine Abos, internal designer Damage Design

Young Designer of the Year Emily O’Neill for Ape House (Sara Gruen, A&U), Journey to the Stone Country (Alex Miller, A&U), Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (Helen Simonson, A&U), and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows, A&U).

Young Designer of the Year Emily O’Neill

Young Designer of the Year Emily O’Neill

Young Designer of the Year 

Emily O’Neill

The Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Hall of Fame Award was awarded to Sandy Cull.

The first thing you notice on K.M. Weiland’s website is her beautiful, wistful photo, taken in a field of tall grass with a typewriter and Pandora’s Box of story ideas.

A few minutes on the site and you soon notice a lot more–like how prolific she is. Not only is K.M. a published fiction author of historical and speculative fiction, including the western, A Man Called Outlaw and the recently released medieval epic Behold the Dawn, she has also mentors other authors through her writing tips, editing services, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

With such titles as What I Love Lucy Can Teach You About Writing Tics and Characters: Likability Is Overrated, I’m a huge fan of K.M.’s podcast, Wordplay. It is so easy to see why K.M. Weiland’s website was named by Write to Done as one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers for 2011.

With so much, how does she get the time to write? Read on, read on… this is a woman who manages to write A LOT in her daily 2-hour writing session.

I really can’t say enough about K.M. Weiland, so…

1.     If you were writing the book about your life, what would an editor write on the back cover blurb?
Fighter, writer, child of God.

2.     Who is your favourite writer (lyricist, novelist or screenwriter etc)?
In the last few years, I’ve fallen in love with Patrick O’Brian. His Aubrey/Maturin series is a study in understated brilliance. I’ve studied the craft long enough and hard enough to be able to see the cracks in most stories, to see the join lines where the authors put them together: I can generally see what they did to make their stories work. But O’Brian… he’s a magician. His writing is so effortless. There are no join lines.

3.     What was the last book you read, and what made you read it to the end?
Kristen Heitzmann’s Indivisible. It was one of those books I gobbled up in just a few sittings because I could hardly put it down. I rarely read romance or suspense—but Heitzmann is the exception. Her writing has been not only a joy to me as a reader, but an inspiration to me as a writer. Her presentation of character never fails to stun me with its realism and empathy, and the stunning and detailed clarity of her prose knocks my socks off every single time.

4.     What text (book, play, movie, TV show or song) do you covet and wish you’d written?
Right now… Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. I hand out five-star ratings about as often as Ebenezer Scrooge sends Christmas cards, but I slapped an unabashed five stars on the first book in that series. Rip-roaring fun from start to finish. It was one of those books you close the cover on and find yourself either wanting to kiss the author for giving you such a good time or kill him for being so darn good he puts you to shame.

5.     What was the first piece you ever wrote (whether published or not)? What became of it?
I’ve written short stories since I was in first grade, but the first novel popped up on my personal timeline when I was around twelve or thirteen. It was titled Thus Cry the Winds (suitably dramatic, eh?) and was about a rodeo cowgirl who was haunted by the mother who abandoned her. As for what became of it… well, let’s just say it’s gathering dust on the floor of my closet.

6.     How do you get started writing a new story? And how do you go about choosing your subjects and where do they come from?
I don’t choose my subjects so much as they choose me. Most of my stories are inspired by a strong character, and he’s usually accompanied by a deep “what if” or “why” question. I am very much inspired by history, something that shows up in many of my stories, although I also love the freedom of speculative fiction. I have backlist of story ideas waiting to be written. Whenever I finish writing a book, I go through that list, looking for the one story that’s ready to be written next. In part, my decision about which story to write is a commercial decision; for example, I try to balance my historical and speculative stories. But, ultimately, the stories themselves have to decide if they’re ready for me to write them. It takes years sometimes for a story to mature in my imagination to the point where it’s ready for me to put it on paper.

7.     According to your bio, you write two hours a day, five days a week. How are you so prolific?
I can’t stress how important I believe it is for authors to carve out a consistent writing schedule. This is the schedule I’ve found works best for me, and, over the years, I’ve unswervingly made those two hours a day sacrosanct. When 4 p.m. rolls around, my writing becomes the #1 priority in my life. I lock the door, ignore the phone, and, through a judicial use of my flamethrower and machete, train people to leave me alone during those two hours.

That said, I don’t believe that the actual amount of time you set aside is so important. I’m fortunate enough to be able to carve out two hours a day. Those with children, heavy workloads, or long commutes may not be able to salvage that much time from their daily schedules. They may only be able to snatch half an hour. And that’s fine—so long as they’re consistent about writing for those thirty minutes every single day.

8.     You live in Nebraska and you talk about music as your soundtrack for writing. Tell us how your writing is colored by your location and the music you choose. Can you describe both for readers.
Although my surroundings must inevitably influence me, if only because they provide the sensory stimuli that feed my mind every day, I don’t consciously draw from my Nebraska home very often. To date, most of my stories have been set in far-flung places—Syria, Italy, Chicago, Wyoming, Kenya, London. However, I do have plans for a future story set here in my hometown of Scottsbluff. Can’t wait to start work on it.

As for music… I couldn’t live without it. I honestly think if I had to choose between books and music, I’d have to go with the music. It’s manna for the muse. Music is the perfect story. It touches our emotional center and conveys meaning without ever needing words. I prefer movie soundtracks when writing—the more intense the better—because of the inherent drama. Nothing beats those moments when the scene I’m writing and the music I’m listening to are in perfect accord. It’s like flying.

9.     What do you find particularly challenging about writing now? What about when you first started out?
Ha! When I first started out writing was easy-peasy. I wasn’t originally interested in being a writer. I just wanted to put my stories on paper, so I wouldn’t someday forget them. I’d just pour the words onto paper and that was that. Writing didn’t become hard until I actually learned “the rules.” Stories aren’t hard. Craft is where the challenge lies. And it’s a marvelous challenge. I often tell writers they should always be writing scared, always pushing themselves to attempt something a little more difficult, a story a little more daring. If we’re not writing scared, we’re not pushing the boundaries and we’re not growing as authors. Currently, my personal challenge is figuring out how to add 40,000 words to my “completed” WIP. This is an entirely new dilemma for me, since most of the time, my manuscripts err on the side of too many words.

10.  You are a very busy writer, tweeter, blogger and podcaster. How important is it for writers to market themselves in all forms of social media?
Vital—if you want to sell books. The publishing industry is undergoing all kinds of transformations right now. Many of them are in the writer’s favor. But these changes are also deepening the need for authors to wear the Marketing hat as well as their Writing one. I won’t lie to you: it’s tough. Compared to marketing, the writing itself is a walk in the zoo. But, whether you’re traditionally or independently published, it’s crucial to put in the time and effort to make your name and your books a known factor among your target audience. Fortunately, the Internet makes it relatively simple and inexpensive to diversify your “brand” across all the strata of media platforms.

11.  http://authorculture.blogspot.com/ - Please tell us more about this venture.
About three years ago, rom-com author Linda Yezak approached me and historical romance author Lynnette Bonner about pooling our resources in a blog that would “inspire, enlighten, and unite writers and readers.” We started off with the three of us gals and three weekly posts. Last year, we added Ray Gun Revival editor Johne Cook to our ranks, and this year we’re pleased to be welcoming mystery author John Robinson aboard as well. The growing collaboration has been a fun project, and I think the site has turned out better than any of us originally planned. It features a wide gamut of articles, including monthly posts on writing tips, marketing, interviews, “lessons from the pros,” and book reviews.

12.  What are you currently working on?
At the moment, I’m elbow deep in half a dozen projects. I’m in the middle of edits for my first non-fiction book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, which is scheduled for publication later this year. I’m also working on my fantasy Dreamlander, which will be released next fall. And on top of all that (and client consultations to boot!), I’m just diving into a rewrite of my historical work-in-progress The Deepest Breath, which just threw me for a loop by revealing that a major subplot wasn’t working. Busy, busy!

13.  What is the most important thing you would tell a new writer if they came to you for advice?
Love what you do. Writing is about the journey, not the destination. Getting published, garnering hordes of good reviews, meeting honest-to-goodness fans at book signings—all those things are fabulous, but if that’s our reason for doing what we’re doing, we’re not only missing out on the deeper joy, we’re also setting ourselves up for heartache and disappointment. Write to please yourself. Write because you love it. Write because you can’t not write. All the other stuff—good and bad—will come in its own good time.