Tag: Motivation

Commentary/Creativity/Writing

Don’t Put Off Creative Writing Until Later in Life–I Regret It

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I have always had a desire to write a novel since my early twenties. I had plenty of ideas, but I always procrastinated and delayed starting. When I was younger, written English was never my strongest subject at school—debatable that it is now :-). In fact, I hated English lessons. We had to read books I didn’t like and write essays on subjects I was not interested in. I was also quite stubborn, so if I wasn’t interested in the subject, I didn’t give it a lot of attention. It didn’t help that I did not get on with my English teacher. Looking back, I was the problem and not the teacher. I was young and thought I knew it all.

I enjoyed reading novels, but in my teenage years, I didn’t read as much as I should. I would rather be out with my friends, or playing video games. After I finished university, started my career and settled down in my early twenties, I started reading more books again. I like to read a variety of novels: science fiction, fantasy, spy thrillers, horror. Pretty much most genre fiction novels, although I am not so leen on romantic, or literary fiction; they are just not my thing.

As I read more books, I had ideas for my own stories. I have always had an active imagination, and I loved the idea of being able to write my own stories. Some people want to be rockstars. I liked the idea of being a novelist. As fun as this sounded, I had many excuses for not starting. I regret a lot of these now, but hindsight can help me uncover my regrets.

Intimidated by Other Books

One problem with wanting to start a creative endeavour is that it is easy to compare your ideas to those of others. Whenever I picked up another author’s novel to read, they always struck me by how flawless they seemed. The plots were well thought out. The grammar seemed perfect. Overall, the quality was high. I found that intimidating. How could I ever do the same?

What I didn’t understand at the time was the process an author goes through to write a book. I had attempted to write short stories before, and although I was pleased with them, the writing didn’t seem as good as I was reading in other novels. I just assumed I didn’t have the skills to produce something of the same quality. My short stories were essentially first drafts that I didn’t develop further.

If I had done my research, I would have found out that an author will write a first draft. That draft will not be very good. They will then do a full revision of their work. Then they’ll do another, and another. This revision process could happen many times until the author has a good draft. This revised version is the real first draft. Even then, the book is not complete. If they are signed to an agent and they have sold the book, then the manuscript will go through a further series of revisions with a professional editor. 

Once the publisher’s editor has finished, then there is a final stage which is the final line edit and proofread. Your book could easily go through ten to fifteen revisions before it’s published, along with multiple gate-keepers. No wonder published novels are of high-quality. Over a long period of time, the text has been revised and reworked. Of course, my first draft stories didn’t seem as good. I hadn’t gone through the entire process.

Worried my Ideas are Bad

I thought my book ideas were good, but everyone thinks that of their ideas. I was worried about what other people would think. People can be cruel. You can find reviews on Amazon to see what people really think. Even for popular books, if you look at the one and two star reviews, people can be very nasty, especially when hidden behind an anonymous name. 

Being criticised is scary. Nobody likes it, but now that I am older and hopefully a little wiser, I am not so worried about it. Sure, if I get a bad review and there are lots of other positive reviews, then I just think the book wasn’t to their taste. I now believe that if you do the best work you can, go through the revision steps and use a professional editor, and take their advice, then the product you put into the marketplace will be good. If someone doesn’t like it, well, that’s on them.

I mentioned before that I have released some non-fiction books, so I now have practical experience of this. All the steps I mentioned above about revision, I did with my non-fiction books, and I put out the best books I could. I know they are good, and the reviews are all mostly very good, so if I get the occasional bad review, while it still hurts, I have learnt to brush it off. Provided the reviews are not deliberately offensive, then I try to learn from them.

Scared by the Amount of Work

When I was younger, I was intimidated by the amount of work required to write a book; that was just for the first draft stage. Like a lot of younger people, I wanted instant gratification. I liked the idea of having written a book. I was worried about the amount of work it would take. As someone once said to me, ‘you want to get to the destination, but you don’t want to do the journey.’

I will bet that this is a common problem for anyone looking to tackle an enormous project. As a young man. I was not as experienced in how to plan a large project. With over twenty-eight years of industry experience working on huge software development projects, I would tackle a book project like any of my former career projects: lots of planning, and break the project down into smaller pieces. It’s like that joke, ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ That is so true. 

Some writers blame inaction with a project on writer’s block, or the muse not being with them. I don’t agree with that. If you get stuck on one project, work on something else; you can still write. You don’t hear of a car mechanic suddenly getting mechanics block, and can’t work on all those cars that are booked into the garage. When I get stuck on a plot point in my novel, I work on another non-fiction project, or a blog post—like this one.

By focusing on a little at a time, you can complete the project. I experience this firsthand with one of my non-fiction books. It was a business and entrepreneurial book called ‘The Path to Freedom – Starting a Business for the Reluctant Entrepreneur’. The final manuscript was one-hundred-fifty-thousand words. That’s a big book, but I applied the same principle to that book. Working on a small piece at a time. It took eighteen months to write that book, but I wasn’t daunted by the size of the project anymore because I had broken the problem down into much smaller pieces. I believe that if any project scares you, then you haven’t broken it down far enough.

Busy Learning Software Development

Like most career minded professionals in their twenties, I was trying to build up my career in software development. I started my career in the video games industry, and after eight years, I moved into financial services as a software developer, and then through the ranks as a leader. My career wasn’t writing novels, that was just a dream; a nice to have.

Even though I have regrets about not starting a novel earlier in my life, I don’t have regrets about focusing on my career. You need the career to help provide for your family, put a roof over your head and make sure everyone has what they need. Building a stable career is very hard, so while I include career building in my reasons for not starting a novel, this one is justified.

Starting a Family Took Up My Time

I don’t regret building up a decent career, and I also don’t regret having children. I have two kids, Amy, thirteen at the time of this post and my son Daniel, ten. If you are reading this and you have young children, then you understand they are fun, yet very tiring. Bringing up infants is exhausting. Me and my wife found two children hard work. Anyone that can raise three of more children deserves a medal.

As a parent, when you have a little spare time and you want to write, or take part in some other creative activity, you’ll be tired and uninspired. I know I was. This constant level of tiredness also contributed to not wanting to start a novel. All the other reasons I stated in this chapter were the primary reasons, but being tired with children was the perfect excuse, as I don’t really think anyone would argue with it.

Now my children are a little older, they are not as challenging. We do lots of activities as a family, but the kids also want to play with their friends, do sleepovers, play video games etc, so me and my wife find we have more time to do activities together, and also do our own things. For a little of motivation for young parents, it gets easier; I promise. 

Now you know why I put off starting my novel for so long. You have probably read this post, thinking these are just excuses for inaction. You would be correct, they are. That’s why a lot of them are regrets, and I hope I can save you from the same problem. At the time of writing this post I am forty-five and I feel like I have wasted a lot of writing time. Don’t make the same mistake.

General

The Joy of Writing Fiction

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I have been a professional writer for many years in the non-fiction space. When I was younger, I had a desire to write fiction, but at the time I never had the confidence to start, so I put it off. It wasn’t until the pandemic happened, and I needed to channel my attention into something new to keep me sane. Being locked in with your family, and trying to home-school, as well as do your day job work was tough; I’m sure many people will relate to this. I needed something I could work on as a distraction. I could spend as little or as much time as necessary to see results. Hello creative writing.

I had lots of story ideas, and I really liked the idea of writing for children, so with that in mind I started learning and writing; short stories to start with. I took online classes with platforms like LinkedIn Learning, Masterclass, and The Great Courses. I also embarked on a nine-month creative writing class by applying to take the Faber Academy – Write a Novel course; I will write a review of that soon as I just completed the course.

With all this learning and story writing, I reflected on why I have fallen in love with creative writing so much. So, in true internet blog form, I have written a list post.  In no particular order.

1. Something I Can do By Myself

If the pandemic was good at one thing, it was making sure you couldn’t do anything with other people, unless you wanted to sit for hours on a Zoom call, which I didn’t. The great thing about writing is it left you alone with a word-processor and your own thoughts. That’s all you need. Okay, you work with editors, proofreaders, beta readers later, but, for the vast majority of the creative work, getting your first draft and revision completed, it’s just you.

As a self-confessed introvert, that suits me just fine. I am not shy; I love talking to people, but I recharge my mental batteries by being alone, and what better activity to do alone: writing.

Throughout lockdown, when the daily homeschooling finished, and I had struggled through my day job work, I would relax and work on short stories. Even if it was only half an hour. That private writing time, with my headphones on, allowed me to reset from a hard day. Would I say it was a kind of therapy? Yeah, sure, that works. That leads us on to point number two.

2. Relaxing and Calming

After a busy day home-schooling and working, I found the simple act of creative writing to be calming and relaxing. I was working on short stories with no particular agenda. There were no editors waiting for them. No pressure from publishers. It was just for my benefit. Will I release those stories? Maybe; I could put them out into a small collection for my own gratification. But there were no expectations. I could write a story and have fun with it.

I like to write middle-grade fiction, so I aimed my stories at children. Having two kids in the house, a daughter (now thirteen), and a son (now ten), also meant I had a small audience. I nervously gave my kids the stories, as they both read before bed, and they loved them. Quite how honest their reaction was is anyone’s guess, as family members will always be nice when they read your work. But they appeared to enjoy the stories. We discussed the plots, and they even gave me some useful feedback from a kids’ perspective to improve them. That was a lot of fun.

3. Doesn’t Require a Lot of Equipment

In my career (training and public speaking) I have often taught people that working within limitations and constraints forces you to be creative with what you have available. This is certainly true with writing. All you really need as a modern writer is a computer and a word-processor. You don’t even need a fancy computer. An old hand-me-down works too.

If you really want to talk about limitations, then you don’t actually need a computer. You can produce work that is just as fun to read with a pad and pencil as anyone with the latest Apple Super-Duper-MacBook-Pro.

If you use a computer, then you can even get away with not paying for any writing software—legally, of course. If you own a Mac, then it comes with Pages, Apples own word processor, and it’s pretty good. You can also download Libre Office, which is a free of cost, and an open source equivalent to Microsoft Office. LibreWriter is a very capable Microsoft Word equivalent, and it won’t cost you a penny. If you are a fan of Google, then you can use their Google Docs, cloud based word processor. So many great options.

4. Learning the Craft is Fun

Whenever I embark on any new hobby or interest, I am the sort of person who has to learn all I can about the subject. I find learning about something just as much fun as doing the activity itself, and creative writing it no exception. As I already mentioned, I took several online self-paced classes, and also undertook the nine month Faber Academy writing program. All of which I enjoyed immensely.

I have also bought and read many books on fiction writing and writing craft. It is so satisfying to read about another writer’s experience, and see how they tackle writing a book, even if you don’t like their approach. It is all valuable information. 

During lockdown, I upped my walking, as that was pretty much all you could do if you left the house, so I sought podcasts to listen to. My favourite was a British show called Writer’s Routine, where the host interviews a writer every episode to talk about their routine and process for writing a book. I started with the latest episode and worked my way backwards through the catalog. I listened to every episode. I haven’t done that with any other show. Super Nerd or what!!

5. Building Worlds in Your Imagination

Now to the writing itself. Fiction writing is partly about world-building, especially in science fiction and fantasy writing. It is so much fun designing a fictional world, and revealing it gradually on the page so that the reader can see a vivid image of your creation in their minds-eye. 

I set my first novel in the future on an established Mars colony. You can just imagine the amount of fun I am having with that. With the story set in the future, I can take liberties and come up with some really cool technology. World-building through writing can be powerful.

When I was on the Faber Academy course, I was reading one submission from a classmate. We had to read and critique each other’s work. In the extract she posted, there were a few lines that described a mechanical bird flying down and landing on someone’s shoulder. 

As I was writing up my feedback, I mentioned that in two sentences; she conjured up a vivid image in my mind that would take a team of visual effect specialists weeks, if not months to achieve in a film. This is why writing fiction and world-building is so much fun. In a few sentences, you can get the same result in your mind with only a laptop that a movie might take ages to achieve. No disrespect to anyone who works in the movie business. Your work is amazing, but the simplicity and power of just a few short sentences struck me. Where else can you achieve so much impact?

6. Understanding People Better

Creative writing isn’t all world-building. The characters we write are just as important. I have found that by trying to write convincing and fun characters; I understand people better. If I write about a character that is trying to deal with a tough situation, I think about their predicament. I will do research to learn about their struggles, and I will use all this to bring a convincing character to life. I guess what I am saying is writing excellent characters improves your empathy towards others, and your understanding of the world.

Something I found very hard, and am paying particular attention to in my first novel, is making my characters multi-dimensional. Trying to add layers to their personality beyond what is just required to move the plot forward. It’s hard.

It’s probably the hardest aspect, but you just know when you get it right as you get a sense of what the character is like in your mind outside the plot. Your mind races with other situations and scenarios. I have added a lot of extra characterisations by having parts of the character’s personality just leap out at me. I guess this is what a lot of writers mean when they say their characters talk to them. I always thought that was rather cliched, but I think there is something to it now.

Also, if someone is mean to you in real life, you can get your revenge on the page. So, watch out. Muhahahaha

7. Improves Your Observational Skills

I have found that since writing fiction; I am better at observing people and their behaviours. A mum arguing with a toddler in the supermarket. A couple having an argument in the street. The old man who goes to the local park every day and sits on a bench feeding the ducks. All very mundane interactions, but when you write fiction, you pay attention. I have even started jotting some of these interactions down in a notebook, as you never know when they will form the inspiration for a story.

When I was walking my son to school, we were walking behind a dad and his two daughters. They were in an earlier school year to my son, but what I noticed was these two girls were identical twins. They looked completely identical in their appearance. The only difference was the colour of their jackets and a hairband on their heads.

As I was walking home after dropping my son off, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be interesting if two girls used their identical looks as a superpower, and a way to cause mischief in school? That simple interaction led to me writing a short story called Operation Body Swap. A fun story about two cheeky young girls who hatch a plan. One simple interaction and subsequent thoughts when taking my son to school led to an entire story. Nice.

8. It’s Challenging

I would be lying if I said writing fiction was easy. It’s blooming hard. Much harder than non-fiction. With non-fiction, you spend a lot of time preparing a detailed outline, do all your research, and then write to the outline that you signed off with the publisher. It’s quite linear.

With fiction, you are trying to hold a cohesive plot together, along with subplots, and write interesting, multi-dimensional characters. I find this very hard, but that is something I like. I don’t want it to be easy. Easy is boring. Getting to the end of a draft and having a complete story that makes sense is satisfying.

Sometimes, when writing Diary of a Martian, I got stuck and wasn’t sure how to progress the plot, even though I had a fairly detailed beat sheet. I struggled with some details. Once I had solved those problems, I was left with a draft that I was happy with, and that feels great. I can’t wait to get my novel finished and through the revision stage as the thought of reading that final draft is exciting.

Like with everything in life, if something is challenging and difficult to achieve, you will appreciate the results so much more.

These are some of the main reasons I find writing such a joy. Do you agree with what I have said? Are there any other reason that you find writing a joy? If so, leave a comment and let me know.

Career/Commentary/General/Motivation

Practical Techniques to Improve Your Self-Motivation

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Lack of motivation is something most everyone has experienced at some time in their lives. We can often jump into action if we are prompted by someone else, but when it comes to self-motivation, we must be both the motivator and the motivatee. 

Practical techniques to improve your self-motivation by Stephen Haunts

This isn’t always easy, as we can be prone to procrastination and, let’s face it, laziness. True, we can be too lazy to do something we need to do. It’s so much easier to ask someone else or convince ourselves that it’s not worth the effort to perform a specific task or go to a particular place. 

I should write a book, but I doubt anyone would read it. 

I’d love to become an teacher, but going back to college… no way. 

The boss wants me to represent him at the award ceremony tonight, but I’d probably say or do something stupid.

I’m too tired to go to the gym today. Maybe tomorrow. 

Demotivators are continually looking for an excuse to avoid doing what they need to do to succeed, to reach their goals, or to simply do something or go somewhere. As shown in the above examples, there can be varying reasons for a lack of motivation. Whether it’s a headache or other physical ailment, a lack of self-confidence, or a lack of desire, you’ve probably been guilty of at least one instance of demotivation. 

We all have. And that’s why this article was written. We’ll explore some tips and techniques that will help you to get up and go, do the unthinkable, and conquer the world. 

Okay, so maybe you won’t conquer the world, but you can conquer your world. So, let’s get started!

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