Z is for Zzzz

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Tiredness can be one of the biggest hindrances to your creativity. After being up with a sick child the past few nights, trust me, I know how it feels! If you're tired and worn out, give yourself a break. Turn off the computer and give yourself an early night, catch up on those zzz's. Your brain will thank you for it.

Mental fatigue can be just as draining. April has been an extremely busy month for me, especially with the A to Z Challenge, and I know when my brain needs some shut down time. So, for the rest of the week I will be taking a small blogging hiatus to recharge those batteries. I will still reply to comments and play catch up visiting all of your amazing blogs, but I won't be posting again until next Monday.

How about you? Are you in need of some down time? Let me know in the comments below, I'd love to hear from you.

Y is for Yearning

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What do you yearn to be/do? If you are reading this blog I am guessing the answer is a writer. Now think about how this affects what you do on a daily basis. What we yearn for impacts our lives, who we are, how we act, our relationships, the choices we make.

Now think about your characters. What do they yearn for? How will this affect their lives and those around them? This doesn't have to be the same as their story goal, but it is integral to who they are. You don't necessarily have to include this information in the story, but being aware of it yourself will help you understand your characters on a much deeper level and this will come across in the writing. Your characters will feel more fully formed and three-dimensional.

What do your characters yearn for? Let me know in the comments section below, I'd love to hear from you.

X is for X-ray

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You've written your first draft and let it sit for a while, now what?

One of the first things I do is perform an x-ray to ensure the skeleton/structure of the story is intact.

I very often write a scene list in the planning stages before ever writing a single word, but I rarely stick to this completely as things change and develop during the drafting stage. So, on this first read through I write up a new scene list, making a note of all the important things that happen in each scene. Once this is complete I can see the bare bones of the story all in one place. I will highlight the scenes where all the basic plot points (inciting incident, turning point, climax etc) take place in a different colour and then I will be able to see at a glance whether the structure is balanced.

For example, if the inciting incident is happening too late then I know I need to either rearrange the scenes in the beginning to bring it forward, or delete them altogether and start later in the story.

I can also tell by looking over this list whether there are any plot holes that need to be addressed, whether the pace needs adjusting, and whether the character arcs are complete. I can also play around with the order of the scenes, without actually changing the manuscript, to see what would work best.

Having the whole novel compressed into a scene list like this also helps you to focus on the plot and character arcs without getting distracted by correcting a bit of dialogue here, a spelling mistake there, or adding some description. It also makes it easier to cut a scene when you aren't looking at all those words you spent hours over.

Once the bones of the story have been straightened out and put in the right place I know the structure works and I can now focus on making the writing itself better.

How about you? What process do you use when you begin the revision stage? Do you perform an x-ray? Please share in the comments section below, I'd love to hear from you.

W is for Wonder

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Many people have said that to be truly creative we need to maintain a childlike wonder for everything around us. I've been raiding the Goodreads quotes again and here are a few of my favourites listed under 'wonder'.

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand 
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour.” 
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” 
― Albert Einstein

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” 
― W.B. Yeats

“You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down” 
― Charles Chaplin

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” 
― Socrates

“Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.” 
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, Joy in the Morning

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.”
― Diane Ackerman

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” 

― Gerry Spence, How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday

And to finish it off, a poem:

“A Second Childhood.”

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber’s dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And I find that I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky;
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I:
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton

Do you maintain a childlike sense of wonder when you are writing? Or do you have any more quotes to add? Share in the comments section below, I'd love to hear from you.

V is for Villains

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We all love a good villain in our fiction. The following quotes all contain things that should be kept in mind when crafting the villain in your story:

"Evil, when we are in it's power, is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty." Simone Weil

"All Cruelty springs from weakness." Seneca

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." Stephen King

"I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, not matter how twisted. They're motivated." Russell Crowe

"Life is not that simple, and people can't be boxed into being either heroes or villains." Jessica Hagedorn

"You can figure out what the villain fears by his choice of weapons." Connie Brockway, The Bridal Season

"A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development." Agnes Repplier

"An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards." John Locke

"The villain of any story is often the most compelling character." John Hodgman

"Evil is a point of view." Anne Rice, Interview with a Vampire

"All things truly wicked start from an innocence." Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

"No one becomes depraved all at once." Juvenal, Satires

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Blaise Pascal

Do you have any good villain quotes to share? Let me know in the comments section below, I'd love to hear from you.

U is for Undermining

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Unfortunately in this business you will likely come up against any number of people who will undermine you
and it can be so easy to take it to heart. Don't. No-one should have that kind of power over you. By undermining you they are just projecting their own insecurities onto you. It may simply be that they don't understand why you want to write, and very few non-writers ever will truly understand that drive.

It doesn't matter what other people think. If you want to write, then write, otherwise you are undermining yourself. We all have our own paths to follow.

"Don't undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is because we are different that each of us is special." Brian Dyson

Have you ever felt undermined? How did you cope with it? Share in the comments below, I'd love to hear from you.

T is for Talent

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Here are a few of my favourite quotes about talent:

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein

"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads." Erica Jong

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What seperates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." Stephen King

"No one respects a talent that is concealed." Desiderius Erasmus

"Genius is talent set on fire by courage." Henry Van Dyke

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." Calvin Coolidge

"There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower." Honore de Balzac

"I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance, application, industry, assiduity, will, will, will, desire, desire, desire." Gordon Lish

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." Thomas Jefferson

"A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage." Sidney Smith

"It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous." Robert Benchley

Do you have any favourite quotes about talent? Please share in the comments section below, I'd love to hear from you.