3 Ways to Integrate Writing with Your Life

Copyright Nintendo

Sometimes life and writing clashes and you find yourself having to give up something you love doing to make some time.  However, this is not necessarily needed.  Here are three ways to integrate writing into a busy life:

1)  Write for short times

When you have a gap of five minutes, write.  Take the opportunity to write a paragraph or two while the spaghetti is cooking.

In the same breath, I should mention that it is good to have longer stretches as well, because getting into the ‘zone’, as they say, requires about twenty minutes of uninterrupted writing.  Even so, every few minutes will help you get down the words before they slip your mind.

2)  Make notes

Make (either mental or physical) notes on what happens to you.  Write down the complicated emotion you’re feeling or a snippet of dialogue that you found interesting.  Pick out little details during the course of your everyday life and make note of them.  That way, you’re constantly writing without actually writing.  (These notes will come in handy later when you write.)

3)  Extend your day

Depending on whether you’re a night or morning person, add a few minutes to your day by going to sleep a bit later or getting up a bit earlier (writing before you go to sleep is a good way to let your subconscious work things out, and writing in the morning normally allows for clearer thinking).  I’m talking about ten to twenty minutes here, nothing that will mess up your routine too much.

Tweet

3 Ways to Harness Your Power as a Writer

As a writer, you have a power that few other people have.  You are a controller of minds and emotion.  Here are three ways in which you can harness that power:

Copyright Nintendo.  Source

Make your readers cry

Livia Blackburne did an awesome post about this a while back.  In short, you need familiarity with the character for whom is to be cried.  You’ll be hard-pressed to get readers to cry on page one.  First, the reader must learn to care for the character and then to make them cry.  Check out the post for details.

A way to harness this is by changing the chronological order of your story.  Don’t start with the death of a loved one.  Start after the death and reveal bits of information until you crescendo with the big emotional death scene.  (Better yet, read Livia’s post)

Make your readers miss appointments

Donald Maass says that the thing that keeps people turning the pages is tension.  That’s what makes them forget to walk the dog and miss appointments.  As horrible as that sounds, that’s exactly what you want to happen.

A way to harness the tension is by posing knowledge gaps.  The gap drives people crazy if they care about the subject.  So reel them in and then leave them hanging to keep them turning the pages.  Don’t let them have all the answers until they get to “The End”.

Make your readers think

A good book, like a good movie, stays in your mind for a long time after you’ve finished it.  You’ll know what I mean if you can remember the thrum in your head as thoughts about the book or movie was flying around in your brain.  No matter how insignificant the thoughts may seem, they grabbed you and that means that the writer did something right.

Things that are relevant to you are always noted first and remembered best, so the way to make your readers think is by making use of universal themes.  Emotion is always a winner.  E.g. Brothers reunited after a long struggle, or on the other side of the spectrum, the horror that isolation makes a person do.  Also, leaving the reader with a question will make use of the knowledge gap and leave them thinking, e.g. should there be limits to where science goes?, or does that madness lurk in everyone’s mind?

Strangely enough, making people degenerate socially, cry and endlessly obsess does not put you in their bad books, but rather entices them more.  Why is that?  That’s another topic entirely.

Tweet