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Why Writing Isn't Always Just About Writing

29/4/2015

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There is something to be said about getting the words down on the page. How many times have you told someone you're an author and they've said, with misty eyes, 'I'd love to write a novel, but I just don't have the time.' Or how about the classic, 'I've got an idea for a novel, if I tell you it and you write it can we split the money?'

Yeah, thanks. Cos the idea's always the hardest part isn't it? It's not the hundreds of hours sat alone, in front of a computer, typing away to produce 60 – 90,000 words or more, that's the easy bit isn't it? ;-)


Before I go into my thoughts on how writing isn't just about writing, you do have to do *some* writing if you want to have some claim to saying you're a writer. It doesn't have to be anything that's published, or publishable, but simply producing words, telling stories (and not only talking about doing it) means you're a writer. OK? Right, now onwards and upwards…


Sometimes, due to Life, Family, Work, Stress, Health, Time, you can't write as much as you'd like. You can't add the thousand words you wanted to add that week. And it's easy to fall into a guilt spiral of 'Oh no I've not written the words, I'm never going to write them, I won't go back to the story, it's best I leave it, I'm embarrassed to come back go it' etc. This is all in your head. One of the most important things about writing, and the simplest bits of writing advice I've been given, on numerous occasions, in person, in blogs and through transcendental yogic flying (I may have made up that last bit) is: FINISH WHAT YOU'RE WRITING. RIGHT TO THE END.


But when you have a time when you can't write, you can't add to the wordage of your work in progress, there's load of other ways you can still be writing; you can still have the joy of writing in your life even if you're not physically writing.


1) Reading. It might sound odd to say reading is still writing. When I read, as well as getting lost in the story, and the characters, I also read with a little bit of an English lit critique eye too. If I see a phrase I like the sound of I make a note of the page number. If I notice how the author's done something clever – telling what the characters have done over a long period of time, without using pages and pages of words, or shifting between now and a different time frame, or as in The Stepford Wives, having the reader, gradually realise what's happening at the same time as the main character, in its slow, horrific reveal. For all these I copy what the author wrote into my notebook with a little note next to it 'clever use of dialogue' or whatever I liked, so I can try it when I'm next writing something of my own.



2) Listening. Even when I'm not writing, I'm still listening out for dialogue, stories people say, interesting phrases, anything that sparks off an idea I could use in a story. A friend told me a sort of parable someone had told them about behaviour and how it stays with others long after the person who did that behaviour has gone. I liked that concept and I've a story I'm planning on expanding on that.



3) Thinking. When you can't physically sit in front of a computer and, you know, write, you can still sit wherever you are – on a bus, in a traffic jam in your car, waiting in the queue at the post office, and think about writing. Why did that character do what he did? What was the back story for the other character that made her behave like she did? I do most of this 'brainstorming' or 'mind mapping' on paper and pencil as it gives me the freedom to write randomly, linking things with lines. It also, means I'm writing differently from sitting at a computer. For me the physical act of using a pencil and paper feels so different from typing it somehow usually unblocks me and the plot/character/whatever ideas often flow. Randomly, but they flow. I don't try to marshal the ideas at this stage, just let them flow out of myself.



4) Watching. So you're too tired to read a book. It's been one of those days. The day job was hell on toast and your mother-in-law called for a five minute chat that took up all your dinner-making time, and then little Jane/Michael came home from school with a need to talk about something that happened at school, and a letter explaining s/he needs to come to school TOMORROW dressed as a character from a Dickens novel. You get the idea. So you flop in front of the TV and watch your favourite drama / film. Even when you're doing this, you can still do it as part of writing. Listen to how the characters speak, do they talk in short fragments of sentences, or long run on sentences, mixing one idea with the next, and the next idea and the next, until they're out of breath? Does something that happens in the show give you an idea for something similar in one of your stories? There's no shame in borrowing ideas from other sources. According to The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, there are only seven basic plots IN THE WORLD, with variations within each, so don't feel guilty about borrowing bits from other stories. You'll write them in your voice, in your way, with your characters, and it will be, what it could only ever be, yours.



5) Walking. For walking you can substitute any simple, repetitive physical activity you can do without much conscious thought. Swimming, weight lifting, washing up even. I like to walk. I've recently got into walking 3-4 days a week for 45mins to an hour each time. I stride off, with my podcast on (Women's Hour, Desert Island Discs, various other flotsam and jetsam from the podcasts section of Itunes) and I listen, while walking. I don't take notes, I just let the words wash around me while I walk. Any physical activity you can do without really thinking about it, is good to help unblock conscious problems you're stuck with. Humans tend to solve problems by thinking about them. That's how we're trained to work. See point 3) cos that's often the best way to solve a problem. Only sometimes that's exactly the wrong thing to do. And you'll know when it's the wrong thing to do! How often have you been stuck on something, a plot problem, a character issue, and you've sat to think about it and. Nothing. Then a few days later you're in the shower / walking the dog / stacking the dishwasher and BOOM, it comes to you, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. So even when you're not physically writing, you can be solving writing problems while you mop the floor, or mow the lawn. And it all counts as writing. Pretty clever isn't it?

So the next time you start feeling guilty because you aren't sat in front of a laptop *writing* remember it's wider than just that, but that is of course important too.

Liam Livings
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Binge Writing vs Series Writing - which is better?

13/4/2015

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This post is about the different ways people write. It's not about which is better, which is right, it's just comparing the two approaches. I'm also not going to go down the 'you should plot' road, cos I know that works perfectly for some authors, me included, and for others it kills the story stone dead, RJ Scott, Anna Martin and Charlie Cochrane I mean you. And for other authors it's somewhere in between.

So, what do I mean by binge writing and series writing?
You know how we live in an age where you can watch an entire series of something in a weekend. Blimey, if you wanted, you could watch an entire show over six series in a weekend, amen to boxsets and Netflicks etc. And you know how back in the day you had to wait for the next episode to be broadcast, on TV, live, in real time, before you could watch it? Well, this is the analogy I'm going to use here.

Binge writing
You write until your hands ache, your bum is sore from sitting, your brain feels like it's going to spill out of your head. You get it. You write a load of words, all in one sitting. I've read blogs about people who've written 40,000 words in a weekend. Albeit that's all they did that weekend (a bit like when you watch Breaking Bad from start to finish in a weekend). This guy ate, slept and wrote, and that was it, all weekend. He was behind with his word count, had a weekend with an empty house and made the most of it.

Have I binge written? Does Kylie Minogue have gay male dancers at her concerts? Course I have. It's what I did for Nanowrimo 2013 and 2014 and I loved it. I love the keeping up with the momentum of the story feeling it gives me. The most I've done is 12,600 on the first day of Nanowrimo in 2013 and it was amazing. It was a rush of being in the story, only being able to type just fast enough as I kept up with the story unfolding in front of me, (kept on rough track by some hand written notes to the side of my laptop and some character biogs).

Thinking about it, the stories I wrote in 2014 were all completed (first drafts only) within 1 calendar month, some in 20 days or so.

But you don't have to binge write until you've over binged. I mean, you couldn't sit watching Breaking Bad, then the Sopranos, then Six Feet Under, then Supernatural, then...your eyes would fall out. With binge writing you need to be kind to yourself too, between metaphorically lashing yourself with a whip to write write write while you're sat in the chair.

So thankfully with this method you can legitimately and guilt-free have a few days off from writing every now and then. If you've binge written 5-6000 words a day for four or five days in a row, you're due a few days off. Take them. Enjoy them. Watch Breaking Bad in a darkened room. But make sure you come back to the story and FINISH IT.

Series Writing
This is the slowly slowly catchy tortoise and the hare, or whatever the story was.

This is the bit of writing advice everyone tells you: write every day. You remember that one? I used to feel guilty when I didn't write every day, when things got in the way – my job, my friends, my family, my life basically. But no more. I don't feel guilty. And neither should you.

With this approach you set yourself a modest word number, and you write at the same time. Every. Single. Day. Without fail. This is better suited to people who don't have large expanses of time without interruption (ie people with children/pets/partners who want to talk to them). If you spend 20 – 30 mins a day, writing 500 words a day. - that's about 2 pages of typed words, in 180 days, you'll have a 90,000 word novel written.

Done.

If you wanted you could write every single week day and in 36 weeks you'd have the big pile of 90,000 words to be proud of. Pretty cool eh?

This is better suited to people who can make small pockets of time to write, on regular intervals. You might get up an hour before you need to, 5 days a week. You might forego an hour's TV in the evening. You could write in your lunch break from work. Give it a go, see which time works best for you and watch your little words grow and grow on the page until you have a whole story, all of your own.

Which of these do I prefer?
Well, that depends.

I write a diary every single day, so I get my series writing in. When I have a lot of life going on, and don't have entire weekends empty of people, things, places, names and faces, I try to write 500 - 1,000 words every day and over a month or three I'll watch my current work in progress grow, as I move towards The End.

Other times, when I have big blocks of time to write I gorge on writing, I binge write and I welcome it, I disappear into the writing, I write so much during these times it's all I can think about even when I'm going to sleep. And that's wonderful too.

But overall, it doesn't matter which of these two you do, or if you do a mixture of them both, whatever works for you and whatever gets the words onto the page and gets you to THE END.
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5 Ways Keeping A Diary Helps Writing Fiction

8/4/2015

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I've kept a diary since late 1997. Every. Single. Day. I write something in it. People almost always say how do I have the time to do that with everything else in my life? I say you make time for the things that matter to you.

I also believe writing a diary every single day, since 1997 has inadvertently helped with my fiction writing in a few ways.

1) write through writers' block. I don't meant to sound smug, but honestly I've never had writers' block. I've always been able to write something. It may not have been to continue with what I was writing at the time, the big complicated project whatever it was, but I've always been able to write something. It may have been writing about what I was feeling at the time – why I couldn't write what I was meant to be writing. Or writing about how I feel stuck and can't write – still writing. The great thing about writing a diary is there's never any expectation to share it with anyone ever. Which is enormously freeing and takes away all the 'is it any good' 'what will people think about it' angst. It means I can write about anything, just letting the words flow. I've realised this is how I write my first drafts of fiction. They're for me. I imagine I'm never going to show them to anyone when I'm getting the words on the page, and it takes away the angst. Writing a diary with no purpose other than myself means it's easy to write fiction things with no purpose other than myself (often they end up seeing the light of day, but at the time, I'm just writing it for myself). Writing a diary every day, also has made me used to writing every. Single. Day. If I don't write my diary for a few days I get a bit antsy, and need to take myself away to write it, 2-3 days all together, flowing from one thought to the next.

2) writing my diary long-hand has stopped me wanting to edit as I write. It's not possible in a diary. So I don't do it. I just concentrate on getting the words down on paper. Apparently writing and editing uses different parts of your brain. You're stopping the creative bit of your brain and activating the critical bit to edit. And when you're trying to, you know, actually write that's a bit like driving along the road and constantly pulling over and putting the car in neutral, before pulling away again and building some momentum changing up gears, only to quickly stop again. When I do my first drafts, I write right through to the end, without stopping, without correcting typos, anything, just write write right to the end. If you edit as you write you're tinkering with the little things, when you need to know the overall story arc to know which bits need changing first. When I hand wrote fiction, while in Australia on the flights and during travelling (simpler to bring a notebook and pencil than a laptop and plug adaptor) I actually loved the slower way of writing long-hand and the inability to move, edit, change things, the compulsion I had to continue moving forward with the story. I'm not saying I'd hand write all my first drafts – it adds an extra stage in having to type it up – but when I don't want to bring my laptop I know I can hand write first drafts, and I think that's due to hand writing a diary every day. Also, by writing first, then editing, you can edit things in batches – 'make x character more likeable' or 'add extra zing to the chemistry between x and y characters' you can brain storm how to do this then drop these extra little bits in throughout the manuscript while still having 'make x character more likeable' in your head for that batch of edits. Make sense?

3) It frees my mind and is healthy. Without an outlet for random thoughts bouncing around your head they kind of carry on bouncing. With a diary you can 'capture' them, lock them down, ground them is the psychological term I believe. When I lost my great aunt, and one of our cats, and recently my good friend, Nick, I had so much floating around. I wrote it all out in my diary. After Nick's funeral I returned to my laptop and wrote about 5000 free association thoughts, feelings, memories, music, texts conversations, anything, related to Nick. I had a good old cry. I have no idea what, if anything I'll do with those words, but at the time it was such a wonderful feeling to get them 'out' of me, onto the page. Psychological counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, it all recognises the value in writing about our feelings. Write a letter to someone who hurt you. You don't need to post it, just the act of getting the feelings out, is healthy. I think a daily habit of recording my ups and down thoughts worries and feelings has helped me through some very dark very depressed times.

4) writing a diary taps into your emotional intelligence. By writing a diary I reflect on what I said, what I did, and how that affected others. Whether happy or sad, writing about how I feel means I can revisit how I felt, and how I expressed those feelings in words. Emotional intelligence is about how we manage our emotions and how we manage our impact on others (through words we say or things we do.) I think this means it helps me write emotions in my fiction. Three weeks after Nick's funeral I sent his husband a card. I bought the card and didn't have any idea what I was going to write in it. But when I sat down to hand write the message (see earlier about hand writing and not editing as you go) it just flowed out of me; the words I wanted to say, the emotions I wanted to tell Nick's widower filled four pages. And when I re-read them to the BF we both got quite emotional and he said it was just the right things to say. I think this helps me express emotions in my writing too, as I'm used to writing about emotions - even if it's messy, it can always be edited and tidied up.

5) writing a diary every day, of about 250 words or so I believe has helped my writing fiction. Yes, I still read writing blogs, go to writers groups and RNA chapter meetings, ask for help from other authors, but as with all practical things, I believe you get better at it by actually doing it. If you want to become a better footballer / skier / scuba diver / baker you have to put in the hours and actually do the activity in question. Writing's exactly like this. There's this whole 10,000 hour rule thing about having to complete that many hours at something to lead to excellence. Bill Gates, and the Beatles, among others, all started early. I think by writing for yourself, you steadily clock up the hours of practising (both the discipline of sitting down and writing when you don't think you can, and of the skills within writing itself you've learned from other writers / blogs / conferences etc). 10000 hours may sound like loads, but assuming I take 30mins to write my diary a day since January 1998 that's 182.5hrs a year x 17 years = 3102.5hrs OF JUST DIARY WRITING. Not to mention since the creative writing I did in my teenage years, writing character portraits in French exchange classes, or while I travelled round Australia, or to my school's creative writing magazine (yeah, I went to one of THOSE schools) or since 2011 when I started writing with a hope of being published. I'm not saying this to be all 'aren't I a marvellous writer' because trust me, my first drafts are ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE, and in later drafts I still make loads of mistakes when I write, I know I've got loads to learn about writing, and always will have, but I'm saying it to show that with just diary writing over that many years I've clocked up almost a third of the so called magic 10000 hours. And all without really even knowing I was doing anything more exciting than recording what I'd done, and what I thought. Every. Single. Day. And if that's not a bit magic, then I don’t' know what is. And even if you don't count it as hours, you count the words, 250 words a day over 17 years is 1,551,250 words! I suppose these are also storytelling too, since I'm telling myself the story of my day – it's hardly a twenty character saga spanning 20 years, but it still has a start, middle and end. Since writing with the intention of being published I've written about 900,000 or so words (most of them were TERRIBLE and needed LOADS OF EDITING) but they were all to the aim of storytelling too. So what I'm trying to say is a little bit over a long time, equals a lot. Even if you only have 30mins a day, 5 days a week, it all adds up.

Have you ever started a journal / diary? How did it go? Or do you write fiction every day?

Now, if you'll excuse me I've got 3 days of my diary to catch up on...

Liam Livings xxx

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Everything no one ever wanted to know about me

4/4/2015

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I was tagged by Lane Swift to answer these questions about myself, so here I go...
  • Toilet paper – as long as there's some to use, I couldn't give a monkey's.
  • keyboard home row or not – as a graduate of Pittman's Text Production skills (since the mid nineties) I am always on my keyboard home row. I am on it now. I wrote this whole thing, without looking at my keyboard once. Take that everyone else who mocks the home row. Without the little bumps on J and F I am lost, lost I tell you lost! Bow at the mastery that is THE HOME ROW / touch typing.
  • left or right handed - right
  • chicken wings boneless or bone in – sorry to say I think chicken wings are only good for making stock out of and then feeding to cats or dogs. Chicken thighs, then come back to me, but wings, too much bone and fiddle I'm afraid.
  • wash body or hair first – I only wash my hair once or twice a week. State registered hairdresser Mum says that's the best way to be, so who am I to argue.
  • Oreos: cream first, cookie or both – whole cookie together. Discovered strawberry centred ones in Australia. LOVE LOVE LOVE. Sad they don't seem to do them in the UK :-(
  • Travel to the past or the future – the past. I'd like to go to the eighties as someone my age now and properly do the eighties, bit hair, big blousy shirts, I'd go all out new romantic and it would be fabulous.
  • paperback or ebook – I much prefer reading paperbacks. I spend much of my day staring at a laptop screen (day job/ writing/ beta reading for others/ blogging) so I don't like to have more screen time when I'm reading. But I do read ebooks, particularly since my author friends share their own ebooks among ourselves.
  • cookies or ice cream – chocolate chip cookies and dark chocolate hobnobs. Oh, and party rings. And crunch creams. (I like biscuits/cookies)
  • coffee or tea – tea. I used to put 5 sugars and half cream or milk and half coffee. It took me many years of this to realise I didn't enjoy the bitter taste of coffee at all, which was why I was disguising it. I now only drink black tea (brewed for 4 minutes, with half a sugar and plenty of milk).
  • Makeup – I've gone to an eighties themed party as a new romantic, with white foundation and mascara and eye liner. It wasn't something I'd want to repeat, make up and beard growth don't go together well. Although if I were actually living in the eighties I think I'd put my back more into it somewhat. See answer about time travel.
  • sneakers or high heels – I'm substituting smart shoes for high heels here. Sneakers/trainers for me all the way. I have a wardrobe filled with trainers and love them and live in them.
  • favourite kiss, tongue or no tongue – bit of tongue, just the right amount, maybe a cheeky bum squeeze too.
  • cash or credit – both.
  • paper or plastic – plastic when the supermarket delivers, or canvas bags when I go myself.
  • baseball or football – Eurovision Song Contest, natch. I am scarred for life from being forced to play rugby at secondary school. Me, playing rugby, can you imagine it? No, me neither, so I just tended to go home early instead.
  • car or truck – car. I'm into cars, but trucks do nothing for me I'm afraid.
  • morning or night – morning. The time to start the to do list, when the day is ready for you, when I have my best ideas and do my best writing. Night – when I sleep.
  • introvert or extrovert – extrovert – but I'm a shy extrovert.
  • wrapping paper or gift bags – wrapping paper. I went through a stage of using old magazines and newspaper to wrap presents. It was retro, it was a bit hipster. I didn't continue it long.
  • country or city – Mum lives in the country. I used to live in inner London. Now I live in suburbia, which I think is the perfect compromise between the two.
  • fly or drive – I dislike flying very much. From the minute the taxi picks me up to take me to the airport until I arrive at my final destination it is Stress with a capital S. However, it's a necessary evil and I do fly. Driving, however, I enjoy – but not on the M25 at rush hour, cos that's just a car park.
  • tap or bottled (water) – tap. I think buying bottled water when we have perfectly drinkable tap water in the UK is 1)very un-environmentally friendly and 2) a waste of money. However, since I rarely drink fizzy drinks (too much sugar and I'd prefer to have my sugar more slowly in cookies and chocolate) I am sometimes forced to buy bottled water when I'm 'out on manoeuvres'
  • flowers or chocolates – Himself has two allotments, and we plan to use one for cut flowers. Chocolates all the way. Always chocolates. Black Magic, Milk Tray, Celebrations, Quality Street, Galaxy. I love them all.
  • pencil or pen – pens must be black ink, I can't bear blue ink I think it's 'common' – yes I know this is odd but it is what it is and I'm sticking with it. Pencils for plotting, character bios, general scribbling on manuscripts, but my diary is always written in BLACK pen.
Liam Livings xx
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Throwback Thursday 2008

2/4/2015

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I haven't done one of these in a while, but I found this buried in the depths of my old laptop's hard drive and thought it would be fun to share.

It's me, in France at the BF's parents' place in summer 2008 when I was still very much in the throws of having blond highlights. *gazes longingly at the blond* I may return to this hair colour, discussions are still ongoing.

Enjoy!
Liam Livings xx
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    Liam Livings

    Gay romance & gay fiction author

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