Building Up and Tearing Down

This post goes along somewhat with my earlier one regarding surrounding yourself with successful people. Successful people are going to be the ones who build up others, not those who tear them down.

This doesn't mean that you have to celebrate writing that isn't up to snuff, but it's still important to encourage the author. People enjoy being around those who build them up and give them support (something that's extremely useful for anyone in the creative arts, where rejections drag you down over and over again).

So, how can you build a person up and still help them to improve? First, the person has to be willing to accept constructive criticism. If they aren't, then you're dealing with thin-skinned individuals, and it's best to smile and nod...and hope that they develop a thicker skin in the future. Second, it's best to wait for someone to ask for feedback (which doesn't take much in most cases...who among us hasn't asked "what do you think?" to our other writer friends). Once it's come to that point, mention issues as you see them, but offer up suggestions for how to improve. You'd be surprised how your suggestions will be taken, and how your feedback will likely be sought out in the future.


On the alternate side of the coin, publicly pointing out flaws (especially ones you think exist, but actually don't), when there hasn't been a request for a critique, is a great way to alienate yourself. I'd take it one step farther, and restrict public comments to critique sites. People don't want to hang out with those who only tear others down, and if you do so, proceed at your own risk. Even if the flaws exist, it comes off as being petty.

So, wait for that request for feedback...it will come. And then, offer it up with suggestions for improvement rather than just being critical. In the meantime, be supportive of their efforts, and encourage them. It's the best way to build others up.

Trust me.

Grabbing the Reader's Attention

What causes a reader to pick up a book and not want to put it down?

The best way for a writer to know the answer to any writing question is to ask it of themselves, as a reader. This situation is no different. So, what makes a book so riveting that you don’t want to stop reading?

Personally, I’m a fan of any book which keeps the action moving, and I’d venture to guess this is the case for most readers. As soon as things begin slowing down, I start losing interest. If things drag on very long, I put the book down, and in some cases will put it aside for weeks or months at a time. So, if we assume most readers want action to keep moving, how do we (now back to being writers) do so and keep the reader’s attention on turning those pages.

1. Start off on the right foot (or maybe the left) – In every footrace, there’s a starting gun. In your writing, you have to capture your reader’s attention immediately if you expect to keep it for the rest of the piece. There are multiple ways to do this, but some things NOT to do would be to describe every unnecessary detail of the scene, give every piece of back story you developed the story with, or have your main character wax nostalgic about their personal struggles. Action helps, but if you toss the reader right into an action scene without some setup, they’re likely going to be confused or worse, unwilling to buy your book (many readers will check out the first few paragraphs of a book before buying).
   
   
2. Keep things moving (downhill doesn’t count) – The death bell for any novel is when the story stalls out. Interesting characters and situations have to stay interesting. Conflict helps. Anytime your characters look like they’ll reach their goals, put an obstacle in the way. Continue this pattern, making the stakes higher and the obstacles harder to overcome throughout the story, and you’ll have your reader’s attention. Life (and fiction) is more exciting when there’s more at risk and everything to gain.
   
   
3. Don’t distract the reader (ooooh, shiny!) – Side plots can be interesting, but if they distract the reader, your pages might as well be a flashing neon sign, hard to look at and something to pass by completely. Readers read to relax, to get away from their every day lives. As such, keep things simple and uncomplicated (note: do not “dumb down” your writing). Plots should NOT have ever-overlapping threads which a reader has to stop and diagram out on a white board to comprehend. The same holds true for the number of characters a writer puts in a story. If the reader has to constantly stop and look back through material they’ve already read to remember a character (out of the twenty in the story), they’ll get frustrated and will most likely set your book down. If they do happen to pick it back up later, they’ll need to refresh their memory on your characters and will probably put the book away again during the attempt.
   
   
4. Start funneling the reader toward the end (clean out the motor oil first) – Readers like to relax, as mentioned. They also like to believe they’re going to reach the end of a book eventually (they have their own lives after all). An author needs to be able to give readers the sense that closure is coming if they just read a little farther. Granted, some books (usually based on genre) can pull this off easier than others. A mystery can’t make it obvious who the killer is too soon, for example. But overall, the closer the reader gets to the end, the more the action should pick up in anticipation of the climax of the story.
   
   
5. A satisfying ending (try not to read too much into this following “the climax”) – Notice I didn’t say “a happy ending.” Not all stories need to have a happy ending (a few of mine don’t), because life isn’t predictable. There will obviously be those who disagree with this, based on the fact that readers want to escape their own lives (real life doesn’t always have happy endings either). But regardless of whether your have a happy ending or not, the reader must feel like the main character achieved their main goal. Otherwise, the reader is going to feel cheated. Although they’ve made it all the way through the book (which was our main goal through all of this), they’re likely not going to bother reading your next one. People like closure, and a satisfying ending is the best way in which to give one to your reader.
   

So, as you can see, it takes a lot of work to keep a reader’s attention throughout the entire novel. But through time and practice, it will become second nature to you as a writer. Hopefully these suggestions for grabbing a reader’s attention are helpful to you.

***

T. M. Hunter has always had a fascination with interstellar travel, spacecraft (and aircraft) and beings from other worlds. Twice a top ten finisher in the P&E Readers Poll for his short stories (2007, 2009), his book HEROES DIE YOUNG earned Champagne Books’ Best-Selling Book of 2008 award. FRIENDS IN DEED is his latest novel. For more information, including links to his published short stories and novels, please visit AstonWest.com. You can also find T. M. Hunter on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as well.

Picking Your Projects

There are those who start a project, then finish the first draft, then go back and edit it a few times, and finally submit it off while they start their next project and work it in the same order.

And then there are people like me…

At the present time, I currently have two full-length novels in work. One is in final edits (and should be complete in the next month or so) before I send it off to the beta readers. The other is in the middle of a first draft.

Add on top of that my short stories, of which I have several in the submission queue (two of which I just finished the final drafts on), one that I finished the first draft on and need to get back into, one that’s still in the first draft mode, and just under a handful that are simply plotlines waiting to be molded.

So, how do I choose which project to work at any given time?

A number of factors go into my decision. Sometimes it’s whatever I feel like working on at any given moment, subject to change on a whim. As an example, I had a great idea a few weeks ago for a short story. I plotted it out and immediately started drafting. A week went by and I got bored with the story so I put it aside. I’ll likely come back to it sometime, but nothing good comes from a writer who sits and stares at the screen for hours, wondering where the story should go (and this, with a plot at the ready).

Sometimes, there’s a more pragmatic method behind the madness. Finishing a project is a great boost, and so a project that’s languishing might need to come to the forefront and be the primary focus until it’s finished. As another example, the novel I’m currently editing was actually taking a back seat to the first draft (of my third Aston novel, which I was working in order to bring out for the fans). At some point, I realized it would be quicker to get this novel completely edited and sent off. Frankly, I think this one might be a really good chance for me to obtain representation (versus the Aston novels, which no agent out there wants to touch), so naturally I’m a bit stoked about finishing it because I think it has real potential in the marketplace. They claim you should never write for what you think will sell, but write what you’re most passionate about. Maybe I’m just passionate about selling lots of books?

Sometimes, things have to happen a certain way to keep the flow moving. As my various short stories get picked up for publication, the number I have in the submission pipeline is reduced. To keep stories out there in queue, I have to generate them in a timely fashion. So, I might take a few weeks here and there to generate three or four more stories for submission.

And then, ultimately, the people paying the bills (editors, magazines and publishers) ultimately have a huge say in what I’m working on. For example, an editor I’m familiar with recently presented me with an opportunity I really wanted in on. Unfortunately, two of my stories that would be involved in working this were just in draft mode. So, I dropped my other projects and went off to edit and polish those two stories. Once all of that was completed, I returned my focus back on completing my edits on this novel.

So, ultimately, there are any number of ways to decide what to work on and when. There’s nothing wrong with working one project at a time, but for the rest of us, variety is the spice of life. Hopefully these suggestions have been helpful, and if you have ways that work well for you that aren’t listed above, feel free to chime in.

***

T. M. Hunter has always had a fascination with interstellar travel, spacecraft (and aircraft) and beings from other worlds. Twice a top ten finisher in the P&E Readers Poll for his short stories (2007, 2009), his book HEROES DIE YOUNG earned Champagne Books’ Best-Selling Book of 2008 award. FRIENDS IN DEED is his latest novel. For more information, including links to his published short stories and novels, please visit AstonWest.com. You can also find T. M. Hunter (under the Aston West moniker) on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as well.

Know Your Weakness

As a new writer, one of the biggest traps we fall into is to continue writing exactly as we did the time before. Perhaps if you were published with world-wide distribution the first (and every subsequent) time you submitted your manuscript, this is a real possibility. For the rest of us mere mortals, it’s important to work on our writing, to continuously develop it until we begin getting more acceptances than rejections.

So, how do we accomplish this?

First, we need to figure out what exactly it is that may be driving our rejection rate up. In that, we have to take a hard look at what our weaknesses might be. Dialogue stiff and stale? Characters uninteresting and one-dimensional? Plots not moving anywhere? No growth in the characters?

One of my own is a lack of description, for both the characters or the surrounding scenery. I suffer from being a writer of minimalist proportions. In other words, if I don’t see a point to giving a description of something, I leave it out. For example, if it really doesn’t matter whether someone has blue eyes or brown, I don’t think to include the information. Even if that character is a main player in the particular story, it still gets dropped.

Needless to say, this is likely why my novels end up being so short, and probably why I still get a sizeable number of rejections.

So, now that we’ve determined what our weaknesses are (and I’ve limited my discussion just to this one, even if I have several others), we need to work on eliminating them. Make time in your writing schedule to work on exercises which will serve to strengthen those writing muscles. In my own example, I’ve made it a goal to write several stories in which I’ve gone out of my way to develop more description of things I’ve never thought were important before.

Now this isn’t to say that this overdone description will eventually make it into the final product. Part of the remaining process will be in determining what should stay and what should go. Getting it out on paper and developing our writing technique to overcome our weakness is only the first step. As with any development, it will take time, but the end result should be well worth the effort.

So, figure out what needs work in your own writing. Once you know your weaknesses, develop your writing to overcome them.

***

T. M. Hunter has always had a fascination with interstellar travel, spacecraft and beings from other worlds. Twice a top ten finisher in the P&E Readers Poll for his short stories (2007, 2009), his book HEROES DIE YOUNG earned several accolades, including Champagne Books’ Best-Selling Book of 2008 award. FRIENDS IN DEED is his latest novel. For more information, including links to his published short stories and novels, please visit AstonWest.com. You can also find T. M. Hunter on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.

Time Management

The trick of starting new features is to remember that you have them...fortunately, it's still Saturday (barely). So, enjoy this latest post on time management.

As an author, the end result is always the same...to write. Whether we write for our own enjoyment, for others to enjoy, or for purposes of information transfer, that's always the same.

But for most of us, that means balancing our writing time with all of the other drains on our time, such as work, family, relaxation (whatever that is), and the like.

So, here are five tips for how to improve your time management skills, and to hopefully increase your writing output in the process...because only by writing more in the time you have will you increase your chances of success in your writing endeavors.

1. Set the goals you want to achieve and the time frame you want to achieve them in.

Those who've followed my posts for long enough know that I can never stress the importance of goal-setting enough. If you don't know where you want to go, you'll never get there...and if you leave it open as to how long you want to take to get there, you'll end up with the same results (or lack thereof, as the case may be). If you know you want to write a 80,000-word novel in a year, that breaks down to around 220 words/day, give or take. If you know you're only going to be able to write 3 days a week, that jumps you up to around 513 words each day you write. If you only have an hour free on each of those days, then you'd better not waste it surfing the internet or shuffling through your MP3 player.

2. Schedule your writing time and stick to it.

Going right along with setting goals is setting a schedule. The first thing to do here will be to figure out all the time you spend already, and what you spend it on. Work, meals, sleep, extra-curricular activities. It all takes time, time you can't spend writing. Set up a schedule of what time you have free, and set up a regular schedule for your writing. Obviously, sometimes things will come up which you have no control over, and that prevent you from writing. Those will happen. When they do, just get back on your schedule at the next available opportunity (just like when you miss a dose of medicine, only you hope it tastes better). Once you get into a schedule, things will get easier...much like when you set goals.

3. Don't let distractions knock you off-course.

This is one of the big issues most writers face. If you only have an hour to spare, you want to do other things. You want to check your e-mail, eat some snacks, shuffle through your MP3 player. But all of those things aren't writing, and only keep you from reaching the goal. If it continues to be a problem (and it often will, for even the best of us), set up another schedule for those things and stick to it the same as you're trying to do for the writing schedule.

4. Be sure to schedule time for yourself.

This is an issue even more serious than the one listed above. Burnout is a serious issue, especially if you try to write every day amidst the workweek and time with family and friends. You may feel that the only way to get anything done is to use every spare moment you can to write. But even writers need down time, time to relax and let the rejuvenation take place. Treat your free time as one of those distractions listed earlier, and set up a schedule for your own personal time...then stick to it. A happy writer is a productive writer.

5. Keep your eyes on the prize.

There are those who read all of this and will scoff at the idea of time management. You can't schedule creativity, they will claim. I beg to differ, and believe that if you set your mind to do something, you will do it. As I've mentioned several times, it's a matter of setting a schedule and sticking to it. Just like goals, that takes practice. And any type of practice is only as good as the effort you put into it.

Despair may set in when things don't turn out the way you'd hoped immediately. What happens if you don't get 40,000 words in the first six months? Will you give up? The trick is to keep your eyes on the prize, whatever it may be in your own writing hopes and dreams. You CAN do it, if only you keep running toward the finish line, and the victory you achieve will be even sweeter than you can imagine.

See you at the finish line!

***

T. M. Hunter has always had a fascination with interstellar travel, earning a B. S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas. Twice a top ten finisher in the P&E Readers Poll for his short stories (2007, 2009), his book HEROES DIE YOUNG earned Champagne Books’ Best-Selling Book of 2008 award. FRIENDS IN DEED is his latest novel. For more information, including links to his published short stories and novels, please visit AstonWest.com. You can also find T. M. Hunter on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as well.

Ten Tips for Setting Goals

Greetings everyone! I'm starting a new feature to the blog, and hope you'll come to enjoy my new Saturday Specials. For the next few weeks, I'll be reintroducing a few articles that some may have seen on other blogs, while I put together fresh articles. So, in the meantime, sit back and enjoy this tidbit on goal-setting...

Does it ever seem like you can never get anything done when it comes to your writing? Weeks or months go by with nothing to show for it? Ever wonder why you never seem to have the time to write?

Perhaps it would help to set goals.

Those who've visited my regular blog already know that I'm a strong proponent of setting goals, and post sets of weekly goals every Tuesday along with a recap of where I ended up on last week's goals. I check my blog daily, so I have a constant reminder each day of what it is I'm supposed to be working toward.

I also post a set of monthly goals at several writers' sites I frequent, and post updates on those periodically (usually every week or so).

The reason is simple: constant reminders of where I'm at and where I need to be serve as motivation, and give direction on what I should be working on. If one of my goals for the week is already finished, I can move on to another.

So, if you haven't been setting goals (or even if you have), here are ten tips:

1. Break your major goals down to the lowest level possible.

What is your major writing goal? Finish your novel? Get an agent? Publish a story in a major magazine?

Break each of those down. For example, to finish your novel is going to require finishing a first draft, editing it, and polishing it. Start with the first draft and you'll need to generate around 80-120K words (or more, if you edit things down significantly). To do that, you'll have to generate so many words a day. I set goals based on chapters per week, but that's just me.

2. Set timeframes for your goals.

So, with your goals broken down, decide how quickly you want to get it done. Finish your novel in a year? 120K words? That breaks down to 10K words a month, which ends up being 2000-2500 words a week (and for you hard-core goal-setters, that's anywhere from 400-500 words a day, assuming you take the weekend off).

3. Make your goals achievable without being too simplistic.

Often, this will take some time to learn. If you've never set goals for yourself, start off small and see what happens. If you're hitting your goals every week/month with ease, set additional ones (or increase the amount you need to complete to reach your goal) to the point where it's actually an accomplishment.

If you're not able to hit your goals at all, then obviously you need to roll them back a bit. Maybe you aren't going to be able to hit 10K words in a month at first (even if you desperately want or need to). Try 5K. One of the tricks about goal-setting is, once you start rolling along, it becomes easier to hit your original goals, and that's when you start piling things on.

4. Post your goals where you'll see them daily.

Create a document and copy it to your desktop. Use it as your background image. Tape a printout (or hand-written copy) to the side of your monitor. Whatever you decide, make sure to put it where you'll see it and be reminded of what you've promised of yourself.

5. Check things off your list when you've finished.

Not only does this provide you with a sense of accomplishment on your journey, you'll also be giving yourself a visual indication of what you should be working on for the rest of the timeframe you've set up for yourself.

6. Celebrate your successes.

Finished your goals for the week? Take some time for yourself. Watch a movie. Read a book (which wouldn't work for me, because I put those on my goals from time to time). Go out to dinner with your significant other or your close friends.

7. Get together with other goal-setters and motivate each other.

This is one of the benefits of posting your goals on writers' sites. There's the double-benefit of being motivated by your fellow writers (by encouraging each other and congratulating your successes).

8. Don't get discouraged.

Sometimes you won't reach your goals. It happens. Just remember that even if you don't reach your end goals for the week or month, any amount of progress is going to get you farther than you were when you started. If you only get 6000 words each month (but desperately wanted 10K), that's still 72K words at the end of the year. And 72K words is a huge chunk of most novels.

9. Adjust your goals as necessary.

If you constantly miss your goals, lower the expectations (just as you should increase them if you hit them with ease all the time). There's no shame in it, and if it results in you being able to hit your goals in the future, you'll feel motivated and encouraged. As I mentioned before, goal-setting is a process. Once you get into the groove, things will become easier to accomplish.

10. Have fun.

Even though goals may seem all structured and calculated, have fun with them. Put other goals on there, such as reading a book or watching a movie. The most important part of setting goals is to motivate yourself on to achieve what YOU want. If you're not having fun, you won't want to do it.

***

T. M. Hunter has always had a fascination with interstellar travel, earning a B. S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas. Twice a top ten finisher in the P&E Readers Poll for his short stories (2007, 2009), his book HEROES DIE YOUNG earned Champagne Books’ Best-Selling Book of 2008 award. FRIENDS IN DEED (January 2010) is his latest novel. For more information, including links to his published short stories and novels, please visit AstonWest.com. You can also find T. M. Hunter on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as well.