Get lost in a story. Stay lost in a world.
“I’m just relaying what the voice in my head’s saying.” – Eminem (The Monster)
When the writing is going well, when my fingers are flying across the keyboard, I feel like I’m just a transcriber, maybe a translator. I feel like the stories are already there, tales of a world that I’m just discovering and dusting off to share with all of you. I’m more an explorer, an archeologist, than a writer.
As the new year approaches, I’m thinking a lot about this quote from Isaac Asimov on his writing schedule:
“I don’t have fixed hours, I don’t drive myself, it’s just when I’m not doing anything else, I’m writing, and I don’t like to do anything else.” – Isaac Asimov
Something to consider…
November might be my favorite month since moving to Phoenix. The weather has cooled for good (usually), and it’s time to get back into the world now that the heat is gone. I have more energy with the cooler weather, feeling less beat down from the heat, and my creativity reflects it.
In the summer, as the temperatures sail past 100 degrees, I wear down quicker. Even inside, something about it chips away at me and I start to go a little stir crazy, like a kind of cabin fever, trapped not by the snow but by the sun. I’ve learned this about myself. I’ve had to accept there are seasons to creativity, and they’re often reflected by the seasons of the world outside my window.
Now, when the weather starts to heat up in May, I shift gears to less taxing projects, more reading, more movies, and less writing and art. It’s my off season in a way, a time of filling the well and getting inspired so when it’s time to commit to the keyboard in the fall, my subconscious is ready to run.
I’ve had some of my most productive times in Novembers past, and I’m looking forward to the same this year. Here’s to the coming winter.
We’re a few days into National Novel Writing Month, and while I won’t be “officially” participating due to their views on generative AI (covered here and here by authors who say it far better than I would), I can’t help but reminisce on past efforts.
It was during NaNo a few years ago that I finally finished the draft of my first novel. The following November, I finished book two, then used that momentum to carry me straight through book three. Something about that deadline of November, of knowing there are so many other authors out there pushing hard all month, really gives me a boost.
You don’t need NaNoWriMo to do any of this of course. It doesn’t even have to be November. It’s the consistency that matters, a whole month, any month, of writing with a clear deadline rushing at your from the end of the calendar. That’s the trick.
NaNoWriMo as an organization has since tried to backpedal and “clarify” their statement, but it all strikes me as insincere, motivated by money, not morals. Of course, plenty of writers will still be using the NaNoWriMo website to keep motivated, and if you’re one of them, I’d only recommend not posting any of your actual words, because it’s not a stretch to say they’ll be selling them to the highest AI bidder come December.
A friend shared this video with me a little while ago when I was complaining about the parts of the writing process I didn’t enjoy doing. It’s a good reminder that every step of the process has its own beauty, its own value.
I want to treat all of my efforts with the same level of respect that master sculptor Fred X. Brownstein does here. From the books I read and the art I view, to the books and art I create, I aim to give it all as much love and care as I see in his process. (And, I might just try writing with a newspaper hat on…)
In a 1947 essay titled “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction,” writer Robert A. Heinlein laid out his now-famous rules. I’ve tried to follow them in the past with varied success, struggling most with #2 and #5. I’m sharing them now as a reminder to myself more than anything. His rules (with an addition from Harlan Ellison that I learned watching Neil Gaiman) are these:
- You must write
- You must finish what you start
- You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order
(…and then, only if you agree – Ellison)- You must put it on the market
- You must keep it on the market until sold
I have a habit of overcomplicating things, of trying to go down too many paths at the same time and finding myself stuck for my confused effort. Instead, I’ll be simplifying things going into the last few months of the year.
Keep it simple.
When I wrote my first novel, I did it through the consistency of writing every day. Participating in 2022’s National Novel Writing Month, I wrote daily for weeks straight, plowing through a novel that I’d been dreaming about writing for more than two years at that point. (And all of that after ten years of struggling to write any novel.)
The following spring I wrote another novel, again in a wave of consistency. And later that year, I wrote my third, finishing it during another NaNoWriMo rush.
Lately, I’ve been struggling with getting to the keyboard. It seems like all the “little things” in life keep popping up, stopping me before I start. But it’s only resistance, and it’s only winning because I let it, because I’m in an all-or-nothing mentality. If I can’t get my scheduled couple of hours, I might as well not start.
Consistency doesn’t mean I have to spend hours a day writing, though, it means I have to spend one, or thirty minutes, or fifteen. It’s not about hours per day. It’s about days showing up. If I had sat down for even five minutes a day, I’d have more words to show for the last few weeks than I do now.
Ideally, I’d hit a thousand words a day. On average, that amounts to about an hour, even less if I hit a good flow. (For the record, I hit my thousand word goal this morning in thirty-two minutes.) Like Bradbury said, “All I need is an hour, and I’m ahead of everyone.” Hardly a day goes by where I can’t squeeze in at least an hour of writing, even if it means setting the alarm a bit earlier.
A thousand words a day, consistently, is enough to write every story idea bouncing around my head, fifty of them by my last count, about half shorts and the other half novels. A thousand words a day gets them all done by my fiftieth birthday, a kind of fifty by fifty scenario.
On that birthday, I can look back with regret, or I can look back on the years of consistency that took my life to the next level. It’s as simple (but not easy) as that.
Heading photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
I’ve recently set up a mailing list as a simple way to keep readers informed on new releases. Putting it together, I started thinking about how I deal with newsletters, marketing emails, and spam on the receiving end.
I use Gmail, and it does a fine job of sorting out spam by its definition, but my definition is far broader, and I want that junk gone, too. The company that just bought my address from a third party? Banished. The flood of marketing emails I got from buying a single shirt from a new store? Trashed. I hate it all, and I bet some of you do, too.
With that in mind, I thought I’d share my method, simple as it is, in case you like spam as much as I do. Which is to say, like a splinter under a fingernail.
This first pointer is the most effective, and I use it daily. Look at every email you receive and ask yourself, “Is this adding value to my life?” What value means is up to you to decide, but if the email isn’t adding it, hit that unsubscribe button at the bottom. Your life is far too important, your time far too valuable, to waste staring at your inbox.
Next, I create a filter for the rest. Every email service I’ve ever used allows you to create filters or rules dictating how to handle incoming mail. This isn’t a productivity tutorial kind of site, so if you’re using Gmail, you can get the steps here. Otherwise, just search whatever email service you use and the keyword “filter” and you’ll find a tutorial I’m sure. (Of course, I don’t want to leave you hanging, so if you’re still stuck after the tutorial, hit me up at justin@justinwilliams.com and I’ll help you out.)
When you create your filter, set it up to grab any email that includes the word “unsubscribe” anywhere within. That’s how you get ’em. I’ve used this feature to set up a rule that sends those emails to a special folder, which I’ve labeled with the incredibly clever name: Filtered.
This pulls all my newsletters and sets them aside to read at my convenience. It also grabs all those miscellaneous emails I mentioned before, and about 99% of the ones I can’t even think of to list out right now. It keeps my inbox nice and clear of junk, allowing me to address it when I’m ready.
Now, with all that said, if you want to sign up for that email list I mentioned and get the pretty good and very free short story I’ve attached as an incentive, you can do it here. I won’t spam you. I hate spam, probably more than you do, and I’ll be damned if I end up on the sending side. If you want, use that filter I described above to keep me out of your inbox. Or, if my story doesn’t earn me a place in your reading life, smash that unsubscribe button.
You are far too valuable to waste your time in a junk-filled inbox.
Header photo by Pau Casals on Unsplash
When I was a kid, like, single-digits kid, I had a neighbor who was both a teenager and the coolest guy I’d ever known to that point in my life. He knew karate. He had a Nintendo. He had a computer. He even had email… in the eighties.
Most importantly, he had boxes upon boxes of beautiful and perfect comic books. He even drew his own and submitted work to Marvel, DC, etc.
And they wrote back!
I wanted to be just like him.
I started drawing more, practicing art, trying to improve. I practiced my storytelling, too. Someday, he would run his own comic company, and when he did, I would work there. That was the plan.
Then he told me the only way to get as good as him was to ignore everything else and draw constantly, even during school. “What about my grades?” I asked him. “You can’t worry about grades if you’re going to get good enough to be a professional artist.”
I was crushed.
I liked earning good grades.
I even liked my teachers.
Enter one of my first secret rules: I would never be good enough at art to make it a career.
That secret rule held for about 30 years.
Then I started trying again.
And not by sacrificing everything else important to me, but just by realizing it’s ok to practice just a little every day, to try and improve just a little every day.
I eventually started learning karate, too. Not because of my old neighbor, but because my own kid got involved in a great dojo and I wanted to share that journey.
Our sensei often talks about the concept of “kaizen”: basically, constant (little) improvements that add up to great change.
Now I try to improve a little bit every day, making small sacrifices for time, sure, but not giving up on the most important parts of my life. Will I become a master overnight? Of course not. And honestly, neither did my old neighbor. If he’s the kind of artist I want to be, he’s still out there learning somewhere, still finding the little tweaks in his work to make it even better. He’s still trying to be just a little bit better every day.
I try to practice kaizen now in all areas of my life. The result isn’t flashy. It doesn’t make for a great Instagram post or YouTube video, but it’s there, and it’s building a solid mountain of progress over time.
In the meantime, I just keep trying to be a little better than yesterday, leading to being a good deal better than last month, and miles ahead of last year. I’m slowly building to success—my vision of success—and instead of racing to get there I’m enjoying the ride.
And I can wait to get there.
Life goes by too quickly because we rush it.
I’m going a little at a time now, enjoying myself along the way.
Constant improvement.
Kaizen.
I’ve spent the last ten years or so wanting to be a writer.
For a small chunk of that, I’ve even written.
It feels like so much wasted time. Why didn’t I write more?
I’m realizing now that a big part of the problem was that, even though I wanted to be a writer, and even sometimes told people that’s what I was, I didn’t actually believe I was one. I simply saw myself as a stay-at-home dad. One that wrote sometimes, sure, but that was a secondary thing, no different than how I dabble in guitar, or paint now and then.
Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home parent. It was a huge blessing for our family to have a parent home. But, it wasn’t my identity. It was something I did for the benefit of my family, not something I felt called to do for myself.
Being a dad is an amazing and life-long role, of course, but the days of driving them to school and events, days of helping with homework and volunteering for field trips, that all has an expiration date. And who am I after that?
For me, I want to be a writer.
In fact, something I’ve recently noticed is this: no matter what other ideas or interests pop up, they all lead back to writing.
I play guitar because I like writing lyrics.
I paint because I like to illustrate my stories.
It all leads back to writing. Every time.
When I left my last corporate job to stay home with our new baby, I thought I’d take that chance to pursue my oldest childhood dream of becoming a writer. It was our second child, so I wasn’t naive about the free time I’d have or anything like that, but I was naive about being able to flip a mental switch and start a writing habit.
And so, for years and years, my writing habit was anything but. I’d write in bursts of motivation and inspiration, hit a roadblock, and stop for months. I told myself it was because the kids kept me busy, or the housework, or whatever excuse I could think of. Of course, none of those excuses stopped me from wasting hours surfing the web or watching television.
The problem wasn’t my family role. The problem was the way I saw myself. Instead of seeing me, the writer, I saw me, the guy that didn’t have the time for writing.
Lately, finally, I feel I’ve gotten past that roadblock.
For whatever other roles I have in life, when it comes to vocation, I’m a writer. Plain and simple.
That means I write.
Having that identity firmly in mind is the “ultimate form of intrinsic motivation”. Habit expert James Clear says:
“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say ‘I’m the type of person who wants this.’ It’s something very different to say ‘I’m the type of person who is this.’”
Identity is key. In fact, In his book The Practice, Seth Godin talks a bit about child prodigies, adding this:
“It’s not important that the kids developed their musical skills when they were eleven. It’s important that they developed the habit of identity. When they looked in the mirror, they saw themselves as musicians, as artists, as people who had committed to a journey.”
It’s the old “fake it ‘til you make it” idea.
If you want to be a writer, be a writer.
If you want to be an artist, be an artist.
You have to see yourself as the you you want to be far before the rest of the world sees it. If you know who you are, you’ll soon find yourself doing the things to make that identity real to the rest of the world as well.
As for me, I am a writer.
James Clear quote from his book Atomic Habits
Seth Godin quote from his book The Practice
Justin Williams 