Don't Wait Till You Feel Like Writing (Or You Never Will)

For a lot of people out there, writing is something they do when the stars are right, the muse whispers, or the spirit takes them. Writing is an exercise done for fun, or when their imagination runs hot, and they go until they run out of fuel in the tank before they set it down, walk away, and wait for yet another creative cosmic alignment to occur.

And for some people, that's all well and good. However, if you want to be a writer professionally (or even if you want to improve yourself as someone who does this for a hobby) then you're going to have to learn to write all the time rather than just when you feel like it.

This is one of those hills to die on. I've got a tent staked out, and s'mores ready.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

A Return to My Favorite Metaphor

Folks who've been to this blog before are aware that my favorite metaphor is to compare writing to exercise. Because both of these activities take discipline and commitment to succeed, and more often than not folks tend to think that natural talent and inborn ability is responsible for way more than it actually is.

6-month novel on average. Why you ask?

If you've ever been to the gym at the beginning of the year, then you've likely seen it completely full of people who are trying to make good on their resolutions. But after a week, two weeks, and certainly by mid-February, most of them have peeled off and stopped coming. And sometimes you'll see a few of those beginning-of-the-year folks come back a time or two throughout the year to try to start again, but it's very rare for them to actually maintain their routine and get closer to the goals they want.

However, if you've ever been a weightlifter, then you know that dedication, nutrition, and proper form makes a lot more difference in the long run than someone who was naturally blessed with a strong physique and a big frame who didn't properly utilize them. If you took two people, one of whom was naturally strong and hefty, and one who was on the smaller end, but the former works out a few times a year and the latter has a dedicated fitness routine they hit every day, then at the end of the year you're going to see exactly how much of a difference this kind of dedication makes.

Now, compare this to two writers.

The first writer might be naturally gifted. Maybe they have a particular flair for a certain genre, or they have really interesting characters, concepts, ideas, etc. But the second writer puts something out every day. Maybe it's just a little addition to their story. Maybe it's that they storyboard things. Maybe they work on their novel, and make progress or get it done. And at the end of that year, the person who has been working hard, studying, and practicing is going to show a lot more progress than the person who just did it whenever they felt like it, or when the spirit took them.

And that gap is just going to get wider the longer this goes on.

It's important to remember that this isn't just for professional authors, either. This isn't some kind of, "Professionals dedicate themselves to the craft, and amateurs just fuck about whenever they feel about it," kind of statement. Because whether you want to write bestselling novels, or you're just putting together short stories for your own enjoyment, the practice and routine are what matters. Just like it doesn't matter if you're lifting weights because you want to be an influencer or a competitor, or because you just want your body to be fit and strong in your day-to-day life, you're doing the same work.

So take a moment, and ask yourself if you want to truly dedicate your efforts to becoming a better writer. How much time, energy, and effort do you want to put in? Because the most important skill you can develop is being able to go to the gym when you're tired, when you're not motivated, when you'd rather be anywhere else, but you put in your reps anyway... because that's what it takes to get better.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

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- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Learning To Weave Your Story Threads Together Takes Practice

There's an old phrase by a talented artist that (paraphrased) goes, "Painting is very easy when you have no idea what you're doing, and very difficult when you do." This also applies to writing. Especially because "writing" isn't just the act of putting letters in the proper order, and putting together complete sentences. Writers need to be able to choose the proper word to convey the right feeling and action in a scene. Writers need to be able to create compelling, interesting characters. We need to figure out conflicts, how to convey someone's personality through their speech, we have to build entire worlds...

And perhaps most importantly, we need to be able to tie it all together with a pretty bow on top.

That last part, though, is also a skill in and of itself. And like any skill, it's something you will get better at with time and practice... but you need to train your brain to recognize, and create, patterns in your work to make sure everything hangs together.

It only looks easy if you don't see all the learning that went into this.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Pulling Disparate Elements Together (As If You Meant To)

As an example of what I'm talking about this week, I want to share a story from last year when I was running a live action game for Changeling: The Lost. For those who aren't familiar with the game, it's a modern fantasy roleplaying game where you all play changelings; humans stolen by interdimensional, god-like beings known as the True Fae. They tore out your souls, replaced them with magic, and altered you on a fundamental level. You escaped from their realm of Arcadia, and now you are trying to exist in the real, modern world. Your magic hides your supernatural nature, but you always have an eye over your shoulder, watching for your old Keeper to come back to reclaim you.

Anyway, I had between 11-20 some odd players in this game... that's 11-20 odd main characters whose goals and aspirations are what shapes the plot of the story we're all telling. So I had to balance out trying to make everyone's actions matter, giving them freedom and agency, and then making it seem like everything was part of one, cohesive whole.

In short, I was co-authoring a novel with nearly two-dozen people, and I had to make all of them feel like their contributions were seamlessly woven into the whole. Piece of cake, right?

In the first session of this game, I pulled several, random incidents out of my game supplement 100 Strange Sights To See In The Hedge. These incidents are totally random, and are simply meant to be filler for your story. But based on how players reacted to them, several of these incidents became canon to the unfolding story. The threads I wove together include:

- A small, fantastical bird alighting on a branch and croaking, "The Ashen Lord Will Devour Your Soul!" which startled one of the players.

- A hobgoblin is crucified on a tree bearing a sign that says Ironmonger, identified as a victim of The Ashen Lady

- A penguin in a Hawaiian shirt wanders down the forest path, roasting alive a fearsome briar wolf who tries to attack it. The penguin then begins eating the roasted wolf.

These three threads, for some reason, are what players decided to latch onto, and follow-up on, so they became the story threads. Worse, I actually misspoke when I said the Ashen Lady instead of the Ashen Lord in the second thread. So now I had a fresh element added into the mix.

That was when I got out my loom, and I started trying to pull all these disparate elements together into a singular whole.

The Ashen Lord and the Ashen Lady were True Fae who appeared to be contesting their shared title. There could be only one victor, and whoever wrenched it away would be the one who would walk away with the power. This created a political struggle between god-like creatures going on right at the doorstep of all the other players. Some wanted to ignore it, and some wants to join in. Some wanted to try to sabotage it so that both of them lost. But as they researched, delved deeper, and sought more knowledge about them, they uncovered more story.

The Ashen Lady was a recent upstart, and it's said she had stolen her part of the title from the Ashen Lord. More importantly, they found that the Ashen Lord had once been the Lord of Night, and that he had ruled alongside the Lord of The Sun. In an act of betrayal he had tried to slay the Sun King, throwing his realm into chaos as he usurped his power. Of course, True Fae are difficult things to kill, so it was likely that the King of The Sun was not dead, but merely hidden, or banished, and would remain so until his title was returned to him, or the conditions of the Ashen Lord's binding were broken.

What they found in the end of this plot arc was that the King of The Sun had, the entire time, been the penguin wandering the local Hedge! He had steadily been regaining his sentience, and some semblence of his power (hence his ability to breathe fire), but he could not speak or communicate who he was until his title was once again bestowed upon him... something the Ashen Lady had been attempting to do by stealing power away from the Ashen Lord.

Again, grab a copy if you're interested!

This is the kind of exercise that can help you, as a writer, weave together seemingly unconnected plot threads. Even if you don't finish an idea, the exercise of taking 2-3 different elements and pulling them all together into a cohesive whole is a way to train your mind into spotting and identifying patterns. Because even if a story has a twist ending, or a plot that seems to turn circles upon itself, pattern recognition helps us identify the structure of a well-told story.

This isn't the only time reaching out to earlier elements and building off of them in unexpected ways has featured in my work. I have a new upcoming addition to the Warhammer 40K fan series Gav and Bob (check out Part Four, The Emperor's Hand, and Part Five, Faith and Martyrs if you haven't yet) where I tie the whole plot up to this point together into a neat little package, for example. I also have an entire third novel for my hardboiled cat series which is all about tying up the loose end I left dangling in the original short story Leo debuted in.

When you start weaving something as complicated as a season of an audio drama, or a plot of a novel (or novels), this is an extremely useful skill to have... because you never know when that old, dangling plot thread is going to come in handy for you to tie up the current plot nice and tidy, or when Chekov's Gun is finally going to go off!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Use Your Spare 15 Minutes (You'd Be Surprised How Much Writing You Can Get Done)

There's a story floating around the Internet about someone whose therapist found loopholes in their mental conditions in order to allow them to achieve tasks in unconventional ways, even if it looked a little odd from the outside. If they were too depressed to make a sandwich, instead of not eating, their therapist suggested just eating individual sandwich components. It was less important that they constructed a sandwich than that they got necessary calories into their body, and if that meant just eating some meat and cheese then that was what they should do. If they had a paranoid episode about their hair curler burning down their house when they left, their therapist suggested just putting the hair curler in their purse. Is that strange? Sure, but if you have the curler in your purse, and you can look at it, then you can use that to reassure your brain that no, it's not plugged in and turned on at home.

This same kind of strategy can be used with creative endeavors as well. Because so often we end up getting so caught up in what writing is supposed to be that we don't stop and ask how it is we're capable of working it into our daily life. Because there are no rules, and if all you happen to have is 15 minutes, you can do a surprising amount with that over time.

It may take time, but it will surprise you what all you can accomplish.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

It's All About Dedication and Discipline

Think for a second about people who have serious exercise regimens. They have to pack up a bag, go to a gym, take their pre-workout, make sure they're hydrated and have proper calories in them, and then they have to spend at least an hour going through a full set of exercises. All told, this can take two hours or more out of your day, and if you're someone looking at that who just wants to get in shape, you might feel like it's impossible. After all, there's no way you could do that with your life structured the way it is, to say nothing of the costs involved.

Maybe not. But doing things this way isn't the only option.

For example, if you aren't very active, you could find opportunities for more walking in your daily life, as well as just taking the stairs more. It's not going to give you a 6-pack overnight, but it's better than where you were. If you have some space at home, you could find a quick yoga routine that limbers you up, and puts your muscles to work. You could even find a body weight workout routine that you can do in 15 to 20 minutes. Drinking more water instead of soda, cutting sugar out of certain meals, or changing how you snack, can all have impacts that get you closer to your goal.

It's the same with writing.

It all adds up.

You may not have several hours a day to write. You may not have the time, energy, etc., to make a cup of coffee, get your environment quiet, go to a particular place, and just lose yourself in the activity... but that's not the only way to write. That's how some of us do it, absolutely, but just like how you don't have to pump iron to get fit, you don't have to sit at a desk in the attic with the door locked and ear plugs in while banging out 10,000 words a day to get some writing done.

If you only have 15 minutes, ask what you can do with that.

Can you write a character description, or plot a short story idea in a notebook, or in an app on your phone? Can you write a paragraph at a time, or even put down some vignette fiction that's only a few hundred words, but which still tells a complete story? Can you just write some snatches of dialogue, or make notes on the history of a setting?

All of these things are still writing. All of these things are going to help you strengthen your mind, and get used to the process. More importantly, they're going to get you used to going through the motions so that you move with greater surety and familiarity, allowing you to turn your writing brain on and off (assuming yours even has an off button) at will. And if you do these things regularly, dedicating a little bit of time here and a little bit of time there, then you're going to find that you can put down a lot of words. As I said back in Writers, Are You An Ant or a Grasshopper? you can write at least 1 novel a year on just 500 words a day. That's the length of a decent Facebook rant... and most of us can write one of those while we're on the toilet during a work break.

If you feel like you don't have time to write, ask yourself if this is like feeling you don't have time to go to the gym. Because that might be true... but perhaps what you need is to not think of writing as an hours long activity where you sit in a special location, and put thousands of words down on a story. Instead, try doing it where you can, as you can, and just do the word count equivalent of getting in your steps.

You might be surprised at how that adds up over a year or so.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, consider checking out my show Tabletop Mercenary if you've ever thought about becoming a TTRPG creator, but you want a glimpse behind the curtain before you just jump into the deep end.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

There Are 3 Rules For Writing A Novel... Problem is, No One Knows What The Hell They Are

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are."

- W. Somerset Maugham

Chances are good that if you're a writer you've been inundated with advice from the moment you picked up your pen or opened a word processor. Some of it may have come from more experienced writers, and a lot of it probably came from people who have no clue what the hell they're talking about. If you're a regular reader, you've probably cherry picked a few examples from this very blog.

As I so often say, though, writing is a lot like exercising. Everyone is different, and what works really well for one person may not work at all for someone else... but you've got to start somewhere if you're going to get those gains.

Exhale while you type. Trust me, it helps.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Try Different Things To Find Your Groove

We've all heard the general rules for writing which we can usually agree on to one degree or another. Read a lot of books to ensure you're lubing your mental wheels. You can always edit a bad story, but you can't edit a blank page. If you have an idea while laying in bed, write it down, because you will not remember it tomorrow no matter what the sleep demons say.

Beyond that, though... well, things get squishy regarding what does and doesn't work.

Your mileage may vary.

For example, some people say you should set yourself a mandatory word count every day, and write till you hit it. Others say you should write first thing in the morning, because that's when you're fresh and have the best ideas. I've even advocated for writing short stories before one tackles a novel because it gets you more used to actually finishing things, and it acts as a kind of tutorial level for you as a writer.

That advice works for some people. For others it's like a ball and chain around their ankles.

Let's take that, "write in the morning," tip. Some people loathe mornings, for example. Or they already have early days with work, childcare, or other duties that simply cannot be moved to make room for writing. Some people are more awake and alert at night, finding the quiet of a sleeping house far more conductive to their work. Everyone is a unique individual who has their own life situation and personal preferences, so it's impossible for most advice to be universally applicable.

And that is okay. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer if something that works for your friend, your teacher, your mentor, or even a super successful author simply doesn't work for you. I do have one more piece of advice, though... try it. Whatever methods someone proposes, or advice that's worked for them, give it honest consideration before tossing it aside... provided it's possible for you to do so, of course.

Write first thing in the morning? Write late at night? Keep a tiny notebook in your pocket at all times? Storyboard your ideas? Go in with no plan and see where it takes you? Write to a specific word count? Write till you feel you're done? Try them all out, and see what gets you the best results, and what works with your life.

This applies no matter what stage of your writing career you're at. Especially since a lot of our habits can get set in over time, and we never take a moment to examine them. Sometimes we're carrying around baggage we don't actually need, and it pays to kick it off from time to time!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!