Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.
— Don Wilder and Bill Rechin
Have you prepared for day 1 by looking over your story materials from part 1 and getting excited to write? If so, great! Are you feeling passionate about your plot and the new characters you are about to bring to life? Fabulous!
But if this does not describe you, don’t worry. If you’re anything like me, no matter how much preparation you’ve done, no matter how jazzed you’ve been about your story idea and characters, now that it’s time to start the actual writing, you may find yourself wanting to procrastinate.
Today, all sorts of distractions could threaten to pull you away from your project. These types of thoughts may enter your head:
“It really wouldn’t hurt to start tomorrow.”
“But this other thing is important.”
“I should wait until things in my life slow down a little.”
Lies. All of them. And here’s why:
“It really wouldn’t hurt to start tomorrow.”
Why is this a lie? Because it will hurt you to start tomorrow. First of all, it will hurt your personal integrity. You’ve set today as your starting day. Even if no one else has any idea that you skipped a day, you will know. And you’ll know that you didn’t keep your word to yourself.
Also, procrastination only gets easier after the first time. If you put off writing today, then what’s another day, and then another?
“But this other thing is important.”
Okay, that may not be a flat-out lie. Other things in your life are important. But the nature of this excuse suggests that your writing goal for the next month is unimportant, which is completely untrue. This is a huge undertaking and one you will be proud to finish. But you can’t finish if you don’t start. So start.
“I should wait until things in my life slow down a little.”
I think we all know why this is a lie. Life doesn’t slow down. It gets faster and busier as we age. It gets faster and busier as we accumulate more gadgets, supposedly to improve our productivity. Don’t wait. You know who waits to achieve their goals? The people who never achieve them.
Repeat after me: I could wait. Or I could be better than that.
In terms of story direction, today will be the most intense day because you have to start somewhere, right?
First, look at your physical setting diagram, the picture board you made showing a few interesting novel settings. Pick one to use in your writing today.
Begin with your main character, so your reader knows who this story will be about, and start your story just a little before you think the action really starts. This opening may get repositioned or even cut later, but it will give you a true sense of your main character in his or her “before” state. This is important for you, the author, to imagine in order to make your character and plot authentic.
Right from the start, your main character should want something. This does not have to be the main “want” that will carry him or her through the book. It could be as simple as wanting to get to work on time, or wanting to catch sight of a cute boy in school, or wanting a cup of coffee. But he or she should want something that propels the initial action. Give your main character some movement. Don’t let the character sit around looking at the scenery. He or she should actively do something.
Attempt to write a strong first line that is relevant to your story and its themes, but don’t spend too much time on this. Review your thematic wordle, since something might just jump out at you, but first lines often change.
For the first day, think of your main character as if he or she is on a diving board on a hot, sunny day and is preparing to dive in. Over the first few days, your character should, metaphorically, jump off the diving board, going from dry to wet, from hot to sudden, shocking cold. Once the character dives in, everything will change, and he or she cannot go back. This is the inciting incident that propels the character forward. It may take several days to reach this scene, but you should be working toward this big change, the moment of commitment.
The first 2,000 words often feel like the biggest chunk of words during the whole month. If you wish, break it up into two or more writing sessions. Feel free to spend some time exploring your setting and at least one character besides your main character. Today’s writing does not have to be perfect. It just has to get done. Like your main character, you are getting ready to dive into your story.
So don’t dread it. Enjoy yourself. This is the story that only you can write.
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
— E. M. Forster
How do you feel when you read a really exceptional book? Does it spur you to write better? Or does it seem to jab at you with the notion that you’ll never be that good?
For me, it’s a combination of both. Which I feel more depends on whatever else is going on in my life. If I’ve just gotten a rejection through my agent, or if I’ve recently received a particularly harsh critique, I’ll probably be swayed to feel I’ll never write as well. If I’ve just written a few chapters I’m really happy with, a beautiful, well-written book may inspire me to think I can take those chapters of mine from merely good to actually great.
The thing is, no matter how much we want to write as well as someone else, we can’t compare ourselves to others, especially when it comes to writing fiction. Fiction, by its very nature, emerges from who we are at our deepest levels as individuals. Your best will probably look nothing like the best writing by John Green or Ernest Hemingway or J. K. Rowling.
And that’s okay. It’s more than okay. It’s necessary.
To be an exceptional writer, we have to find uniqueness within ourselves. Outside sources can motivate us to look harder within, but ultimately what will make us excellent is mining what is already inside us. Sometimes this is grueling, painful work. It always takes courage because putting your most personal and deepest beliefs into your work, where people can see and criticize them, is scary.
But it’s the only way to be exceptional.
So keep reading inspiring work by authors you admire. All the while, remember that they have put themselves out there. Their hearts are on the line in a very delicate way so that you can enjoy their books.
Do you want someone to be that in awe of your writing one day?
Be brave.
Be yourself.
Today during your writing I’d like you to consider your story’s genre.
If you’re writing a romance, focus on introducing your reader to the love interest (or at least one of them, if there will be more than one).
If you’re writing a thriller, scare the pants off your reader today, even if it’s only in some small way.
If you’re writing science fiction, show your readers something unique or complicated in this new world that will amaze or intrigue them, so that they walk away trying to wrap their heads around it.
If you’re writing a contemporary realistic story, focus on making your story world authentic yet unique. Focus on the atmosphere and mood you want for your book.
Does your story work with a secondary genre? Are there romantic elements? If so, hint at this today. Maybe it’s not a standard mystery, but there will be plenty of questions sprinkled throughout that keep the reader turning pages. Focus on those today.
Showing the genre doesn’t have to be elaborate or complicated. Find out what your story is and show that on the page today in your own unique way.
It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
— E. L. Doctorow
You know who impresses me the most among fast-drafters? The unpublished. It’s true, and you know why? I remember what it was like before I had anything published because it wasn’t all that long ago. I remember what it was like before my family and friends took my writing seriously. I remember how difficult it was to stand up not only to everyone around me but to my own niggling self-doubt.
All writers, published and not, live with high amounts of self-doubt, but I admit it can be easier once you’ve had some publishing success. It may not help fend off your own insecurities, but it can help others take you and your writing goals more seriously.
The first year I attempted to write a novel in a month, I remember, I was frustrated with everyone in my life on a daily basis. I was yet-to-be-published, and many people in my life thought of my writing as nothing more than a time-sucking hobby. They often confronted me about how I was making their lives harder with my month-long writing goal.
This added lots of conflict and stress to my life. Relationships suffered. I became angry and bitter. Here I was, attempting something so incredibly difficult, verging on impossible, and no one was helping me with it! In fact, they were fighting me!
Fast forward a few years. Now, I have published books, and people see my writing as something more than a time-sucking hobby. But, to be honest, the biggest change is not in the attitudes of others but in my preparation to handle my writing challenge.
Each year I’ve been getting better at preparing for my month of writing by thinking of how I can best fit my goal into everyone else’s lives. You see, I’ve noticed that I write better when I’m under less relational stress. So I do what I can. I mentioned some of these things in chapter 9, but they bear repeating, now that you’re immersed in your fast draft. Try getting up half an hour before the rest of the household to write so it doesn’t interrupt anyone, or stay up half an hour after everyone else has gone to bed. If you haven’t already done so, spend one afternoon preparing some frozen meals for dinner over the next week. Don’t get discouraged by your typing or writing speed in the first few days — it will get faster as the month progresses.
I realize now that, in the beginning, I was saying to my friends, in effect, “Stop EVERYTHING! I have to write.” Now I’ve claimed it as my own personal goal that I’m going to make work, even if it means a few sacrifices. Most of them are only personal sacrifices. Now my actions say, “As you were. Nothing here to see.” And in fact, since then, my husband has completely forgotten about my writing goals during several month-long writing jaunts.
All it takes is a little preparation to bring some added peace to your writing life.
On day 3, I’ve asked you to focus on others, and I’d like you to consider having your main character do the same thing. How can your hero act selflessly to help someone else?
This task is part of creating likable characters. It’s important to establish their likability early on, even if the main character is initially making some mistakes or poor choices.
If it doesn’t make sense for your main character to act selflessly in today’s writing, can you insert this in the form of a flashback, or have a secondary character or your love interest act selflessly? Blake Snyder wrote a wonderful book on screen-writing called Save the Cat! The premise, quite simply, is that the simple act of a character saving a cat will make him or her likable and a character readers will want to follow.
Here are a few suggestions to jump-start your creativity:
• Have your character save a hurt animal.
• Have your character skip a meal or miss out on sleep to help someone.
• Have your character miss a final exam in order to help someone else.
• Have your character use hard-earned savings to buy groceries for someone in need.
All of the above examples involve some sort of self-sacrifice. Even if it’s a small sacrifice, this can embody your character’s larger selflessness in an endearing way.
There’s a reason that adding a selfless act works so well in fiction. We are surrounded by selfish acts every day. Think of the last time you went grocery shopping. Was the parking lot crawling with people just waiting to offer you the next parking spot? The last time you were at Starbucks, did the folks already in line offer you the space in front of them?
Selfless people are uncommon; that may be one of the reasons we look up to them. If the selfless act you add doesn’t work, you can always take it out during revisions, but I encourage you to try adding a selfless gesture for your main character. It may even help you like the character more yourself.
Today’s writing should also involve one of the images from your image board of symbols and icons (from chapter 6). Choose one and think of it as you’re writing.
This prompt doesn’t have to be difficult or worked in perfectly. Let your main character play with an object. Just let her hold it, move it, or look at it. Something subtle. The object can grow in significance later in the novel, or you may realize later that there’s a better object to open your book with. For now, use it as a placeholder that you can always come back to and change.
As I described earlier, in my novel Losing Faith, I mention a Jesus statue in the first line and a few times in the first scene; its early significance is to show the main character’s embarrassment with her religious family and her antireligious plans for the evening. But the statue grows in significance in later scenes. In early drafts, I had tried other objects in the same place instead, such as a Bible and a condom wrapper. Sometimes you have to play with a few images to find out which one works best with your theme. But that’s okay. Fast-drafting is for playing.
Go and play. Learn something new about your characters today.
My mom was a phoenix who always expected to rise again from the ashes of her latest disaster. And in spite of her self-doubts, she had a very strong sense of who she was. She had a sense of self-worth. She loved being Judy Garland.
— Lorna Luft
This process takes a lot of faith. Faith that fast-drafting will actually help you. Faith in the storytelling process and that a germ of an idea can actually grow into a fully realized novel within a month. Faith in your characters and that they will be interesting enough to carry your story.
But most of all, faith in yourself.
Your faith will be tested. Maybe not today, and maybe not next week, but chances are good that it will happen during your thirty-day journey. I’m telling you this now so you won’t be surprised or feel alone in it. There’s a reason they call it a leap of faith and not a step of faith.
The thing about faith is this: overcoming a crisis can make you much, much stronger.
For instance, imagine this scenario: A religious woman loses her husband of many years, who dies an unexpected early death, leaving her without companionship or someone to pay the bills. At that point, she may question her faith, asking, “God, are you real? Are you a good God, like I’ve always believed? Or are you just an idea that sounds good when everything is going well?”
As you can imagine, the woman enters a very dark season. Not only has she lost her closest human companion, but she’s now lost her beliefs. Or has she? The thing about faith is, all it takes is a tiny seed to come back and grow with a vengeance. That’s faith at work.
Three years later, if we check in with this woman, will we find that the seed of faith remains dormant? Will she still be living in a state of anger or bitterness, feeling like she’s misplaced her life’s hope?
Or will the seed of faith have grown and become much stronger than it ever was before? If this woman survives her dark season, and comes to know and be comforted by her God in the face of adversity, she won’t be as fragile if another huge tragedy hits her life. It likely won’t rock her faith a second time, or at least not to the same degree. Her faith is strong. She is strong.
So I encourage you, when your faith is tested in your story or yourself, hold fast. You will have dark moments of doubt during this month-long journey, but hang on and preserve a seed of hope and you’ll be fine. That seed will grow much quicker and stronger the second time around, after you’ve faced some adversity.
If you come away from this month with a completed manuscript, that is something to be proud of. But if you come away with a renewed and stronger faith in the process and in yourself? That will serve you for all your days to come.
Today, return to your main character’s goals. What is his or her main need or desire for this journey? Review your story plan to refresh your memory. Have you shown the reader this need or desire yet? If not, show it today.
Does your character have the faith he or she needs to succeed? Does he or she have a seed of faith? Show us that seed in some small way.
Why is your main character’s desire important, not just to the character, but to all of us? He or she should want something that we can relate to, and today I want you to identify what that is. Universalize that desire. Have someone else in your story relate to it, either in the same way, slightly differently, or in a completely different way so your main character initially can’t see the similarities.
In this way, you show the reader why he or she should care, too, or why anyone or all of us should care.
If you have already shown the reader the main need or desire, spend today making that need deeper. Perhaps a small bit of backstory will help the reader understand why the character needs this so badly. You’re nearly 8,000 words into your story now, so a little backstory in small doses will not hurt. Hopefully your reader is now committed to walking the journey along with your main character and will be happy to learn more about him or her.
Today is also a good day to add a bigger question for the reader. You may have already been dropping small questions to keep the reader turning the pages. Today, let the reader really question a character’s motives, even if those motives won’t be explained for some time yet. Or put your main character in a situation that will be seemingly impossible to get out of gracefully.
Your reader will enjoy spending time considering the possibilities and solutions.
The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising (“but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…”) and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.
— Neil Gaiman
Visually restimulate your inspiration.
Think of the book you’re working on as a movie. Let’s pretend it’s a year down the road, and your book is finished and polished and on its way to becoming a bestseller. The people from Paramount have contacted your agent and are interested in optioning the film rights, but they’d like your input first.
We’re just dreaming today. Obviously. Go with it.
The first question they ask is: “Who do you think should play the main character in the movie?” (Because, you know, big-time producers always want an author’s input about this sort of thing.) “Do you have any suggestions for the antagonist, and the secondary roles and bit players?”
The producers love your feedback and keep asking for your advice. “Where do you think the movie should be filmed? What city, town, or neighborhood would suit it best? What’s the color palette? What can you hear as the sound track? Are there particular songs that fit certain scenes? Are there special effects?”
This exercise isn’t about evaluating whether your book has potential as a movie. This exercise is meant to get you visualizing your world and the people in it. Before writing today, see and hear and experience some of your story as if you were watching it as a movie. Play a few inspirational songs from the playlist you created during your planning month. Plus, it’s just plain fun.
If you’re looking for some new inspiration, take your movie visualization and apply it to a new scene: How would these actors, this setting, and this sound track unfold? What if Zac Efron played the love interest for your next romantic scene? What if Ellen Degeneres was the wacky aunt at the family dinner table during one of your confrontations?
Write that today. Don’t worry if it takes you out of the progression of the story. Allow yourself to play a little, and perhaps the scene will get shifted somewhere else on a later draft. Just have fun today to get your creative juices and excitement for this story going.
Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.
— Ralph Keyes
There is no such thing as “waiting for inspiration.” It’s an oxymoron. Inspiration doesn’t come through the waiting process. It comes through the doing process. All your best ideas are going to come out of the process itself, not from a bolt of lightning or a muse-struck moment while you’re meditating.
Remember when you were brainstorming for this draft? What were your biggest eureka moments during your brainstorming? Were they well-thought-out ideas that had been brewing in you for years? Or did they seemingly just appear one day out of thin air? Did they come when you were staring at a piece of art on your living room wall, or when you were on the elliptical machine at your gym?
Perhaps it wasn’t even an idea that was the big aha, but just a connection between ideas. This is the process of doing in order to bring inspiration.
It is a known fact that, just as a watched phone never rings, your muse won’t appear while you’re staring paralyzed at your work in progress. Muses are sneaky. They like to sidle up beside you when you’re busy with other thoughts. They like to pretend they’ve been there the whole time.
How many people have you met who seem to have a great idea for a book (or they think they have a great idea for a book)? Almost every person I meet, writer or not, likes to tell me about his or her Great Book Idea.
The difference between them and you? You’re actually writing yours. You’re not waiting for the day when the kids are grown or you cut back your hours at work or the story is fully formed from beginning to end in your mind. You’re not waiting for inspiration to hit you like a tsunami so you can stay up for three days straight and write until your fingers bleed.
You’re doing it here and now. In thirty days, no less. And you’re doing it regardless of how you feel.
Today I’d like you to focus on showing your main character’s biggest weakness. All great characters need flaws, and your main character is no different. Look back at your story plan if you need a reminder. Then, take a moment and reflect on your own personal flaws. How do your personal flaws affect the way you’ve been living your life? How do your character’s flaws affect the way he or she is living life?
Flaws often cause wounds. Who is your main character hurting, simply by virtue of this flaw? If your main character is hurting someone in your novel, this can cause a great moral dilemma for your reader. Of course, your reader wants to root for your main character. But what if that means watching that character hurt another? Whose side will the reader be on?
Adding this sort of moral dilemma may feel scary. What if you lose your reader’s allegiance along the way? What if your character cannot be redeemed in your reader’s eyes?
But a deep moral dilemma will make your reader care more. It’ll make you dig deeper to find unique and powerful ways to redeem your main character. No one wants to read about the perfect character, a do-gooder, going through life helping everybody. Bor-ing!
Your readers will pick up your book because it offers plenty for them to think about. It’ll make them rethink their alliances and their core values.
So make the flaws big and bad today. Don’t be afraid of them. They’ll make your writing stronger for the rest of the month to come!
You get lazy, you get sad. Start givin’ up. Plain and simple.
— James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner
What if you knew it would work out?
When I began trying to get published, I admit, I thought it would be easy. I thought my first manuscript was pretty engrossing, and at least as good as the latest New York Times bestseller I had read. I was certain I’d have my pick of agents and editors clamoring to pay me millions of dollars.
I don’t think you’ll be shocked to hear it didn’t work out that way. It was, in fact, my third manuscript that ended up getting me representation from a smart and savvy agent and, eventually, a sale to a wonderful publisher. But I have to tell you, as time went on and I submitted manuscript after manuscript, building a pile of rejections taller than my car, I definitely started to doubt success.
In the midst of this, though, I realized something about the books I was reading. They all had one thing in common: a confident use of words. And I started to wonder if my lack of confidence was leaking into my writing voice. Was my writing actually getting worse as I was losing hope in my ability to get published?
This revelation caused me to forcibly stir up hope in myself. Quite honestly, I don’t know that I even believed my hopeful words to myself at first, but I continued to say them to myself anyway. Each day when I sat down to write, I repeated to myself the same mantra: This will be the one. This will be the manuscript that sells.
And you know what? It helped. It must have, because that manuscript really was the first one that sold.
If someone came along and assured you that this book you’re working on now would get published, impact throngs of people, become a bestseller, and [insert personal goal here], would you write differently?
What if you knew you would succeed?
Write that way, live that way, and you will!
Today is a day for action, both for yourself and for your characters.
I’ll bet you’ve got some great tension going on between some of your characters by now. With the addition of selfless acts and flaws and objects and goals, chances are your characters are becoming increasingly interesting and layered.
Ideally, if you haven’t written about it yet, you have already been thinking of your inciting incident. These smaller tensions your character has been feeling should be leading to a greater conflict, something that will happen or, better yet, something the character makes happen that will forever change his or her life.
Today, aim to hit that moment.
If you’ve already passed your inciting incident, concentrate on making a character do something that will raise another question. Perhaps a secondary character gives away a secret that makes the reader wonder if he or she is trustworthy. Or perhaps the love interest does something that indicates that one of his or her major goals is in conflict with your main character’s goals. The reader will wonder how this can possibly be reconciled.
These are the types of questions you want to feed your reader, and yourself, so you’ll keep writing to find the answers.