How I Keep the Story Going
Writing Advice
So, you have a story to tell. You want the world to hear it. For whatever reason, you think it’s important. You’re willing to invest time and energy to write it and share it. And then, a wall comes out of nowhere and you feel like you can’t. The story is stuck. You’re stuck. All you’ve got is the desire to write and a faint memory of a story you felt passionate about. You remember being passionate. Where’s the passion?
Many people would call this writer’s block. Perhaps it is, but what’s in the name? What do you get from knowing the name of the congested feeling that won’t let you write?
For one, you get something you can google. There are so many writers writing about how to deal with writer’s block, it’s shocking. You will hear advice like: keep writing every day, set a time for your writing, set space for your writing, (Julia Cameron’s) morning pages, set yourself goals, take it one step at a time, give yourself rewards, etc.
Just this morning I read an article about internal resistance, right here on Medium, without even searching for it. So it is everywhere, you just need to look. However, I’m not here to recycle those ideas.
I recently shared my idea about how I keep a story going with a bunch of writers and I got a lot of ‘thank you-s’ for it. This came as a surprise because I thought the idea would make me sound insane. Clearly, I’m not a great judge of what is insane and what is not.
My trick is to keep my characters alive. If I can keep them alive, the story is alive by extension.
So, I visualise my characters; I either draw them or if they look like someone else, I print the photos — in my current project, my main characters look like a couple of actors, so I have their pictures on my wall.
I start my day by saying good morning to my characters. During the day, I chat with them. I tell them about my day and what’s going on in my life, compared to what is going on in ‘their lives’.
It is not a good idea to use images of someone you know. When you know a person, it is almost impossible to visualise them as a fictional character, so use ‘faces’ of people you don’t know. That way, you can give them a personality, an identity as you choose. Unless, of course, you’re writing a memoir. If your ‘characters’ are people you know, well, hey, that makes this exercise that much simpler.
For me, that ‘fading of passion’ is NOT about fear, especially not fear of success. I promise I cannot wait for success. The passion fades because I am unable to write the story so quickly. As new things come into my life, my brain moves on, I think about other stuff, and the story that I felt so passionate about takes the back seat.
If I could write (like) 100 times faster than I do, the passion would not fade, my books would be out faster, and I would not be writing about this problem because I would not have it. But I can’t write that fast, so in time, the passion fades.
This issue of ‘time’ causes another problem. As I spend more time writing a book, I realise how much time it takes. Do I have that kind of time? I have other issues I need to worry about, problems to solve, am I being wasteful with my time? This shifts my priorities. And my priorities will shift my passion.
At the end of the day, my desire to tell a story is great, but can I afford it? Do I have the resources such as time, energy, and money (paying the bills is really important) for such a ‘luxury’?
All of these will affect the way I feel about writing. But…
If you do have a story you’re desperate to tell, you’ll find a way no matter how long it takes. You will come up with crazy ideas like talking to a couple of pictures on your wall, pictures of people you don’t even know.
You will balance your priorities so that the story stays in the ‘front seat’. What you must do, you must do, but this one ‘luxury’ is just for you. And that’s the way you’ll see it.
If you do try this, please let me know how you went on. Did it work for you? It’s okay if it didn’t. For me, morning pages did NOT work at all, even though many people swear by them. However, having a writing corner (and it is a corner, not a space) worked like a charm. I have all kinds of notes there, and even if I have just five minutes, I will peep into the corner, just for the heck of it if nothing else.
Best wishes to all.
