* * *

You can have a lot of babies during the book publishing journey

I wrote Arcana when my first baby was six months old, got pregnant with my second baby while querying, found my amazing agent a few months after my second baby was born, got pregnant with my third baby while on submission, and had the final manuscript due right before my third baby was born. Three years… three babies. ONE book.

Moving sucks

This shouldn’t be news to me, really. I’m pretty skilled at moving—I had to move 5 times before I was 11 (Dad was in aviation) and 3 more times after that—but I’d never had to deal with moving not once but twice with two babies, another on the way, and a book deadline. Let me set the scene: my family and I moved back to SC after a brief 4-year stint in Birmingham, AL, but we were renovating a house, so we had to move in with my parents for 6 months until it was ready. My book was out on submission during this time, so I was keeping busy with packing and moving and deciding what should go into storage and oh yeah picking out every detail for our newly renovated home that had been gutted down to the studs…plus caring for a 9-mo-old and a 2-year-old…and then finding out I was pregnant with my third. And that was when my book sold and it was time to move into our new house and decorate and nest and prepare for baby number three and also get Arcana ready for my editor. Looking back, I’m unsure how I didn’t go completely batshit crazy. But I wouldn’t change a thing.

Naptime is a requirement

I’m pretty sure it’ll still be a requirement even when my kids are well past that age. Have you ever tried to write—or concentrate on anything—with a toddler, preschooler, and a baby around? Here’s what you can do to mimic the experience: start writing a scene—really immerse yourself in it—now, in the middle of a beautifully worded sentence, jump up and do random chores—these will signify the numerous requests your children will come up with while you’re trying to write (Where’s my bunny/blankie/favorite toy? I have to go potty. I want some milk. I want some water.) Be sure to wander long enough that the sentence has completely disappeared from your head. Now, sit down and try to pick up where you left off. Type one letter, and then jump up, knock over a glass of milk and clean up the mess. When you finish cleaning it up, start to sit down, and then realize the baby is about to grab a cord to chew on. Scoop up the baby. Now try to write again…maybe another word or two. And now the baby is fussing. He’s hungry. Sadly save your work—all the while trying to soothe your baby—and close your laptop. Know that they have won. Writing while they’re awake is futile.

1k/day is my word count goal of choice

This seems to be the perfect number for me: enough that I feel productive, but not enough that I feel overwhelmed. I write with this goal in mind, but it’s with the understanding that as I get toward the end of my MS, I will write about 5 times that in a day—I will write like a crazed fiend during naptime, bedtime, and every stolen moment in between. Along the same lines, I had to make it a requirement for myself to meet my word count quota for the day before I could do anything fun. New book I couldn’t wait to read? I had to finish writing for the day. Twitter and FB posts to respond to? Not until writing was finished. I’m like any other writer, though—a lot of times I fell into the black hole of social media and squandered my precious writing time on funny memes and cute baby pictures.

Never end the day’s writing session at the end of the chapter

I found that it caused way too much anxiety for the next day’s writing goals if I had to begin the session by starting a brand new chapter. And by anxiety, I mean I dreaded writing the next day—I knew my writing time was limited, and that I couldn’t afford to spend the majority of it staring blankly at my computer screen. With Arcana, I had a loose outline in my head, but I’m more of a pantser than a plotter, so I didn’t have every chapter mapped out from the beginning. I knew I had to get smart about where I ended a writing session for the day—even if it meant going over or under my word count goals. So if I ended the session at the end of a chapter, I would force myself to start the next chapter—sometimes just a few notes to myself, but anything that would make the next session easier.

* * *

Jessica Leake has been in love with historical England ever since her first literary crush: Mr. Darcy. After embarking on a quest to bring her own intriguing and headstrong characters to life, she decided to quit her day job as a clinical therapist and spend her time weaving arcana with words.

She lives in Greenville, SC with her brilliant husband, three painfully cute children, and two mischievous dogs.

Jessica Leake: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Arcana: Amazon | B&N | IndieBound | Powell’s | Indigo

About 2, maybe 3pm every day, I hit a wall. Hell, it’s not just a wall. It’s a mountain. NAP MOUNTAIN. With craggy peaks of sweet torpidity, with mighty spires of somnolence. I hit the mountain, and find a small mountain town called Sleepysburg, and there my body is just like, “Fuck this, fuck all of it, fuck you, just — just give into the glorious miasma of lethargy.” And then I lay in the marshmallow streets and stick to the taffy-molasses puddles and —

Well, you get the metaphor. I nap. I fucking nap hard.

Sometimes it’s a 15 minute power nap. That’s usually all I can manage with a toddler running around. Once in a blue moon I manage a deeper dive, and I fall into what could only be described as a nap chasm — me falling into a crater of pure unconsciousness. I can fall into this crater for two hours. I can lose part of my life in this thing. I wake up and forget my name for 15 minutes.

This desire to nap — it times out with the weather.

I look outside, I see gray blah. Like a choir of ashen ghosts joined hands and filled the sky. Everything bleak and blasted and wet and cold. When that happens, my body is all mm blankey and pillow so warm and just shut the crap up and nap already you foolish mortal.

See, but —

When the weather was warm, I’d sometimes use that time to run.

And I remind myself, you should do that now.

And my brain is like BUT BLANKEY

And my brain is also like hey, you should run

And my brain is then like PILLOWS SWEET PILLOWS

And my brain is back to no, but what about running

And my brain screams JESUS CHARLESWORTH CHRIST RUNNING IS TIRING AND YOU’RE ALREADY TIRED SO WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO HAPPEN IF YOU RUN, DINGWHISTLE, YOU’RE JUST GONNA GET MORE TIRED SO STICK WITH THE PLAN ALREADY

And today, I was like, yeah, whatever, you might be right but I’m gonna go get on the dumb elliptical anyway, and then I sashayed my grumpy bear body over to the elliptical and clambered onto it, and before I knew it I did a good three miles while I watched a back episode of Gotham. (Which, incidentally, I think is getting better with every episode. Still have a couple to go, though. No spoilers, or I spray you with hot cat urine.)

I did it.

And I wasn’t tired anymore.

I was actually feeling pretty energized.

I took a quick shower and I was ready to conquer the world.

I made a bad-ass dinner and ran around with the toddler and here I am, writing this blog. And now I’m reminded that every day, when I hit that wall, I’m making a choice. I’m deciding whether or not I’m going to take the easy way or the hard way. Am I going to give in, or push back?

The easy way would’ve been to nap. The easy way would’ve been to exude all my willpower from every pore in my body in an aerosolized mist and then just flump down on the bed and that’s that.

The hard way was to admittedly do something not that hard — it’s not like I had to go fight in a war or wait tables at a busy Manhattan restaurant — but it was still a lot harder than napping.

The easy way would’ve paid off in the short term. Immediate pleasure-spike.

The hard way paid off bigger in the end.

The easy way is the short con. The hard way is the long con.

The long con almost always pays out better.

I mean, okay, this isn’t universally true. If one choice is, “Walk over to that picnic table and eat a delicious slice of pie,” and the other harder choice is, “Enter that bouncy castle over there, the one full of hunger-mad raccoons,” yes, granted, the easier choice is truly the wiser one. Picnic Pie over Raccoon Injury any day of the week.

Certainly it’s worth looking at if the harder choice is also the smarter choice.

But in general, y’know, it’s always worth taking the time to make that assessment.

Sometimes the short walk will get you there faster. But sometimes the longer walk is the prettier, more interesting walk — and it’s the one where you have more time to think, get more exercise, see new things. Like two Yetis making love on a hammock made of human skin.

Park close to a store — easy to head inside. Park far away — longer walk. Seems dumb. Isn’t dumb. Again: more exercise. More blood flow. Better chance of seeing something funny happen in the lot, too, like a couple seagulls fighting a preschooler over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I’ve never seen that. But I want to see that. I bet that’s amazing.

Fast food is easy. Home cooking is hard. But, y’know, about a thousand bazillionty times better. For you, for your family, for the Pink Slimecubes that must be destroyed in the dungeons beneath Ronald McDonald’s clown-vomit murder factory.

Art is like this, too.

It’s harder just not to create art than it is to actually sit down or stand there and commit. It’s easier to think about creating something, or to talk about creating something, than it is to actually will yourself to that act — a very difficult, transitional, sacrificial act. It’s easier to think about stories or dream stories or imagine your published stories than it is to actually carve them letter by letter across a piece of paper. The thing about the easy way, though — the thing that’s seductive — is that it’s a known quantity. We know what we get out of it. We’ll get it quickly and without complication and likely with great (if momentary) pleasure. The hard way is a question mark bolted to an iron door. The door will be hard to open and the path beyond it, potentially treacherous. Its reward is unknown, uncertain, and seems counter to what we really want in the first place. You’re tired? Nap! Ta-da! Why would you run when you’re tired? How dumb are you?

Except, it’s not dumb. It pays off.

Sometimes, you do have to take the easy way. Sometimes, you really need a nap, or a cookie, or a day off from whatever it is you’re doing. That’s okay. You can push too hard. Bend too far and you can break. But just the same — sometimes you really have to push.

So, push.

Stretch.

Run.

Create.

Fuck it.

Hell with the easy way. Dying is the easy way. Living is the hard way.

So keep going.

Keep running.

Keep living.

Keep making cool stuff.

[insert NIKE swoosh logo here]

Writerly motivation is a tough nut to crack. I go and I write a single tweet, I get immediate feedback. Maybe nothing happens, or maybe some people respond. Could be I get some retweets, some LOLs, some digital high-fives, a troll or two. Social media is great because it’s a dopamine rush. I’m a chimpanzee who pokes the button and gets an immediate testicular tickle.

Writing a book is nothing like that.

Writing a book is you spitting in a tin pail once a day. And you won’t even let anybody see it until it’s full. “NO, IT’S MY SPITBUCKET, YOU CAN’T SEE IT YET, NOT UNTIL MY MASTERWORK IS COMPLETE.” *hawwwk* *ptoo* *plunk* “DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

It’s completely self-reflective and self-driven. Wanna know what it feels like? It feels like this:

You write a paragraph on little slip of paper, then whisper to yourself: “Is it any good?” Then you respond, also in a whisper: “I have no fucking idea.” “Oh, okay. Should I keep writing it?” “I really don’t know, please stop talking to me.” “Okay.” “Okay.” Then you use your manuscript to soak up the tears, and discover it’s not even good at doing that.

So, how do you do it? How do you motivate yourself every day to drag your sluggy body up to the keyboard and headbutt the keys until a story is made? Day after day, one month, two month, six month, a year if that’s what it takes? As the actor is wont to ask the director:

“What’s my motivation?”

So, here, then, are some practical thoughts on building your story, one word-brick at a time:

Write First

Seriously. Do it now. Stop looking at me and go write. Here’s the thing — it doesn’t work with everyone’s schedule, and I dig that. But for my mileage, getting up early to pound out some word count helped me to assign priority to it. I’ve noted in that past that we seem to get only so many IEP (Intellectual Energy Points) throughout the day — and we sometimes spend them on unexpected things, like impromptu corporate meetings, family crises, or being hunted in the woods by masked slashers. But, spend those points early on writing, and you never have to worry about losing the motivation to do it later. (Though you might die in the woods hunted by a masked slasher. So. Uhh. There’s that.)

Find Your Process

Sometimes, the way you do things is square peg, circle hole. Which is also the name of my Sexual Memoir. But whatever. Point is, trying to write the way somebody else writes is demotivating. But writing the way you write feels like a well-oiled machine. Also, Well-Oiled Machine is the name of the sequel to my Sexual Memoir. Which I’m capitalizing for reasons that are unknown to me.

Point is? Create a mechanism. Get yourself into the flow. Develop good habits. All these things are motivational generators — momentum creates momentum.

Do Not Fucking Multitask

Multitasking is a myth. Your brain can’t do two things at once because you’re a human and we humans are all unitasking dum-dums. You cannot write and then answer emails and then tweet and then braid your pubic hair. Stop that. Carve out a block of time, whether it’s fifteen minutes or two hours. Use it to write, and only to write. You will make progress and progress is itself motivating. Forward motion. Fuck inertia. To reiterate: momentum creates momentum.

Take Breaks

Do not multitask, but also don’t keep running full-speed into a wall. Take breaks. Move that sack of slugs and rubbers you call a body. Force blood through you — blood is creative lubricant, after all. (Er, not literal lubricant. Weirdo.) Five minutes here and there will clear out a lotta cobwebs tangling up your motivational innerspace.

(Did I just use the phrase “motivational innerspace?” Ugh.)

The Sugar Tickle

Okay, I’m usually pretty clear that hey, carbs are not the greatest thing to be wolfing down when you’re trying to access WORDS and THOUGHTS and THINGIES (see, I just ate pasta, and all I can come up with for that third word is ‘thingies’). You eat a fistful of Snickers and sure, you’ll get that heady sugar rush, but then all that chocolate and caramel will gum up your THINKMACHINE and next thing you know, it’s Naptime in Writertown.

But! But. Snacks of the sugary variety can be nice (in moderation) as a reward for the day’s end of wordsmithing. You finish what you sat down to finish — you hit your daily word count — and that little stab of dopamine in the deep, junkie well of your brain may motivate you tomorrow. Because it remembers. A brain never forgets chocolate.

The Cheerleader

We need cheerleaders in our lives. People who unabashedly love who we are and what we’re doing no matter how kooky it seems. You’re not just dreaming about writing — you’re chasing that dream down with a fucking trident and spearing it to reality’s soil. You need someone willing to champion that and cheerlead you, not someone who will hike down their lederhosen and take a big squirrely dump on what you’re doing. This is real, and you need it to be real, and you need someone willing to acknowledge how real it is. That’s not to say we don’t need critics, too — and our loved ones can be that, too. Cheerleader and Critic are not mutually exclusive. But if you don’t have someone in your life excited to shake their pom-poms for you, find someone, stat.

And don’t forget to shake your pom-poms for them, too.

Read A Shitty Book

Reading a terrible book is really clarifying. “I can do better than this,” you say, excited to prove your supremacy over execrable prose-based poopsmithy.

Read An Amazing Book

Reading an awesome book is really clarifying, too. “I see the power and vitality of this,” you say, realizing how much writing and storytelling matter. Maybe you won’t ever be that good, but reading a helluva good book can be aspirational.

Get Excited About Tomorrow’s Writing

Sit. Stop. Think not about today’s writing but tomorrow’s. Get excited. Formulate plans. “Tomorrow, I’m going to kill a character and it’s going to be tremendous. Tomorrow, the hero wins. Tomorrow, I get to write a scene with an otter manning a laser harpoon. Tomorrow, I get to kill a politician with bees.” Whatever it is, find something in tomorrow’s writing that excites you.

And, pro-tip — if you can’t think of anything?

Then maybe tomorrow’s writing needs to upgrade its awesomeness, yeah?

Fuck It, Stop Looking For Motivation

I don’t have any magic answers.

I’m trying, I really am.

But listen. Listen.

Writing is fucking hard, sometimes. Writing is dentistry on monsters. Writing is trying to castrate a galloping horse with a slingshot. Writing is letting a bull loose in an orphanage.

And there comes a point when it’s like, you either love this, and it motivates you? Or you don’t, and it doesn’t. I can’t manufacture motivation. Neither can you. You can only stir the flames if there’s already a spark there. You can’t awaken a dead fire.

At the end of the day if your interest in writing is born only of little tricks and tips — basically you fooling yourself to write — then maybe you need to look really hard at this thing you want to do.

Writing is contagious madness, a lot of the times. Even when it sucks, you wanna do it. And that, I think, is one of the things that separates the Aspiring Not-Really-Writers from the Really Real Writers — the latter group writes even when it’s hard, even when the motivation is a dry well, even when the inspiration seems like a dead or dying thing. They hook the car battery jumper cables up to the coyote’s car-struck carcass and rev the engine and make the damn thing dance yet again. Seems dead, but isn’t. Every day then is an act of revivifying your own abilities and motivations. The act of writing becomes clarifying to the act of writing. To restate the principle for the third time: momentum begets momentum.

(Writing is like heroin, that way. Heroin leads to heroin. Writing leads to writing.)

Again, that’s not to say you can’t do things to get going. I sure do. But if day in and day out you hate the process and find yourself having to artificially engineer something that isn’t there — it’s worth asking why, at least. Motivation then becomes not this external thing. It’s internal to the process. It’s part of it. Self-generating, self-replicating, a fire that feeds itself.

The best motivation, then, for a writer is to write.

Write when it’s hard.

Write when it’s easy.

Write when life doesn’t want you to.

Write when you don’t want to.

Write when everyone tells you not to.

Write, write, write.

Love the process or hate it. Love the end or hate the end. Let that chimpanzee’s testicular tickle come not with the feedback you get or from what happens when you put it out into the world — but get it just from the act of creation. Putting one word after the next and forcing them to the shape of a story. The act of creation, difficult as it is.

Go forth, right now, and write.

And let the act be the motivation.

NOW PLEASE LOOK AT MY PAIL OF SPIT AND BEHOLD ITS GLORY.

*shake shake*

*slosh slosh*

* * *

The journey to become a successful writer is long, fraught with peril, and filled with difficult questions: How do I write dialogue? How do I build suspense? What should I know about query letters? How do I start? What the hell do I do?

The best way to answer these questions is to ditch your uncertainty and transform yourself into a Kick-Ass Writer. This new book from award-winning author Chuck Wendig combines the best of his eye-opening writing instruction — previously available in e-book form only — with all-new insights into writing and publishing. It’s an explosive broadside of gritty advice that will destroy your fears, clear the path, and help you find your voice, your story, and your audience.

Amazon

B&N

Indiebound

Writer’s Digest

The holidays are swiftly coming up.

A lot of you are writers. Writers with books out. Novels, comics, collections. Hell, we can even expand this to indie games, or Kickstarters, or whatever you want, long as it’s you writing it and it’s something that tells a story.

So, here’s your chance to promote that thing in the comments below.

Tell us about it! Tell us why we should check it out! Get excited.

(And don’t forget to give us a link to click. By the way, giving us links to click may hold your comment in administration for a short time. Do not panic! I’ll administer throughout the day.)

But, this promotion thing: it has rules.

First: keep it short. Like, one paragraph short. And not one of those paragraphs with the size and density of a brick. Keep it lean and mean — back cover copy. A hook in our mouth to drag us forth.

Second: you must also promote another book (or comic, or KS, or game, or whatever) by someone else. So, one of yours, one of someone else’s. Failure to do this may open you to a surly side-eye, straight-up mockery, or a trip right to the spam oubliette.

Comment section is open.

GET THE TO THE PROMO CANNONS.

We’re halfway through the month — the month of furious novel-scribbling and word-barfing. Whether or not you’re doing NaNoWriMo, every month represents an opportunity to carve out new narrative territory, no matter if you’re writing 200 words a day or 2000.

So, I’m gonna put 30 Days In The Word Mines on sale here at terribleminds for $1.99.

I’ll also put the Gonzo Bundle on sale, too. That one, for just $15.00.

SO, two bucks gets you the former.

Or, if you’d rather have eight books instead of just one: fifteen bucks.

This is also a reminder that if you’d rather check out awesome writing books that aren’t only by me — behold! The NaNoWriMo Storybundle is still going. There you get 12 books for $15.00.

So, again:

If you want 30 Days in the Word Mines for $1.99:

Buy 30 Days In The Word Mines

Or, if you wanna check out the whole bundle for $15:

Buy Gonzo Bundle

Sale runs till Wednesday! Prices only available here, direct through PayHip.

Last week’s challenge: The Three-Story Sentence.

So, I saw this thing at Buzzfeed.

21 Stock Photos That No One Will Ever Be Able To Use.

Well, we’re using them now.

Pick one! (Or: use a d20 or random number generator.)

Write a story inspired by that image.

You’ve got 1000 words.

Post at your online space, link to it here in the comments.

Due by next Friday.

(Don’t forget to identify which photo you’re using!)