Rekindling our Passion

by Sandy Tritt

Passion. You remember what that feels like, right? When suddenly the world becomes brighter, clearer—like you’ve been living in a black-and-white two-dimensional world and suddenly wake up to brilliant colors in three dimensions. 

Whew! It’s exciting. Whether the object of our passion is a person, religion, organization, hobby—whatever—it’s as though our entire world brightens.

And time? Time no longer exists—as long as we're involved with our passion. Hours disappear in what seems like minutes. Nothing matters except being with our passion.

Yes. Sweet, sweet passion.

And passion not only changes how we view things, it changes how others view us. When we are passionate, others are drawn to us. They feel our excitement, admire our determination, and want to be near the energy our passion generates.

I remember when I was passionate about writing. Nothing could stop me from doing it. I wrote late into the night. I wrote during my lunch break at work. I wrote while stirring spaghetti sauce. I wrote every day. Even though I managed to hold down a demanding career—while also being a wife, mother and housekeeper—the fire of my passion ran hot through my veins and never dissipated.

Until one day, it did.

I’m not sure when it happened. Life is tough, and we deal with a myriad of situations. Growing children. Work problems. Financial difficulties. Marital issues. Aging parents. Health issues. People we love die. It goes on and on. There’s always something to throw water on our flame.  

Yet . . . I’ve always believed that if we’re given a passion to do something, we should do it. It’s our calling in life. We never know when our time on earth will be up. What if we spend our entire lives putting aside our passion to deal with other stuff? What if a bit of depression steals our energy and we get bogged down with just trying to survive? What if we allow our passion to die, taking us along with it?

Fortunately, I am blessed with good friends. They noticed my flame going out. They called me on it. “Why aren’t you working on your novel?” they asked. “Why haven’t you finished that thing yet?”

Oh, I had excuses. Plenty of them. “I don’t have time,” I complained. “My eyes are tired after a long day of work.”

“Send me what you have,” my close friend and co-worker Charl insisted. “Let me help you.” She looked at my novel with fresh eyes, making suggestions, asking questions, adding details.

And something in me stirred. My heart beat a little faster. I wanted to start working on my novel again. I really did. But when? My schedule was already overfull.

More than twenty years ago, when I first started Inspiration for Writers, I had problems with time management. It seemed like I was constantly working, yet I didn't get as much done as I thought I should’ve. My writer friend Rhonda explained how she had set office hours for her work-from-home business. When she was in her home office, she worked only on writing and editing and refused interruptions. And when her workday was done, she closed her computer and didn’t look back. I adopted those policies and found I was not only more productive, but I also had another life, a non-working life.

Of course, work on my own writing was always at the bottom of my to-do list, somewhere after rearranging the alphabet and solving killer sudoku puzzles, so it never happened. But maybe, if I changed my priorities a bit, I could find some time?

I spent a weekend with my novel. My pulse quickened and my energy levels grew. Like discovering the fountain of youth, my heart beat happiness into every cell of my body.

My passion was still there!

That little spark caught hold and soon the fire glowed hot. My thoughts returned to the characters I loved, the story that intrigued me—the story that no one but me could tell, the story I was meant to write.

Better yet, passion creates energy. I needed less sleep, so I had more hours in the day. More importantly, I had more energy.

My passion was back!

I tightened my schedule, eliminated a few time-drains, and reserved an hour a day to spend on me—and sometimes more on weekends. Just me. Just me and my passion.

What about you? Has life taken the heat out of your passion? Have you abandoned your writing because there’s not enough time in a day? Have you allowed your purpose in life to linger at the bottom of your to-do list?  

Email us at IFWeditors@gmail.com. We can help. We offer a free sample edit or consultation to help you rediscover the passion that once energized your life.

And we give away encouragement for free. Just ask!

Because no one should live without passion.

And no one should die without fulfilling his or her purpose.

Visit us at InspirationForWriters.com. We are one of the oldest and most respected writing and editing companies around. Check us out.

© 2019 Inspiration for Writers, Inc. This blog post may be printed, reposted, and shared as long as it is copied in its entirety and this copyright notice is included.

GUEST POST: Overcoming Writer's Block with Automatic Transcription

by Jason Kincaid

This article was originally published by Descript, and an expanded version of the article can be found here.

If you’re a writer—of books, essays, scripts, blog posts, whatever—you’re familiar with the phenomenon: the blank screen, a looming deadline, and a sinking feeling in your gut that pairs poorly with the jug of coffee you drank earlier.

If you know that rumble all too well, this post is for you. Maybe it’ll help you get out of a rut; at the very least, it’s good for a few minutes of procrastination.

Here’s the core idea: thinking out loud is often less arduous than writing. And it’s now easier than ever to combine the two, thanks to recent advances in speech recognition technology.

Of course, dictation is nothing new—and plenty of writers have taken advantage of it. Carl Sagan’s voluminous output was facilitated by his process of speaking into an audio recorder, to be transcribed later by an assistant. (You can listen to some of his dictations in the Library of Congress!) And software like Dragon’s Naturally Speaking has offered automated transcription for people with the patience and budget to pursue it.

But it’s only in the last couple of years that automated transcription has reached a sweet spot—of convenience, affordability, and accuracy—that makes it practical to use more casually. And I’ve found it increasingly useful for generating a sort of proto-first draft: an alternative approach to the painful process of converting the nebulous wisps inside your head into something you can actually work with.

I call this process idea extraction (though these ideas may be more accurately dubbed brain droppings).

Part I: Extraction

Here’s how my process works. Borrow what works for you and forget the rest—and let me know how it goes!

• Pick a voice recorder. Start talking. Try it with a topic you’ve been chewing on for weeks—or when an idea flits into your head. Don’t overthink it. Just start blabbing.

• The goal is to tug on as many threads as you come across and to follow them as far as they go. These threads may lead to meandering tangents—and you may discover new ideas along the way.

• A lot of those new ideas will probably be embarrassingly bad. That’s fine. You’re already talking about the next thing! And unlike with text, your bad ideas aren’t staring you in the face.

• Consider leaving comments to yourself as you go—e.g. “Maybe that’d work for the intro.” These will come in handy later.

• For me, these recordings run anywhere from 20–80 minutes. Sometimes they’re much shorter, in quick succession. Whatever works.

Part II: Transcription

Once I’ve finished recording, it’s time to harness ⚡️The Power of Technology⚡️

A little background: over the last couple of years, there’s been an explosion of tools related to automatic speech recognition (ASR) thanks to huge steps forward in the underlying technologies.

Here’s how ASR works: you import your audio into the software, then the software uses state-of-the-art machine learning to spit back a text transcript a few minutes later. That transcript won’t be perfect—the robots are currently in the ‘write drunk’ phase of their careers. But for our purposes, that’s fine. You just need it to be accurate enough that you can recognize your ideas.

Once you have your text transcript, your next step is up to you. Maybe you’re exporting your transcript as a Word doc and revising from there. Maybe you’re firing up your voice recorder again to dictate a more polished take. Maybe only a few words in your audio journey are worth keeping—but that’s fine, too. It probably didn’t cost you much. (And good news: the price for this tech will continue to fall in the years ahead.)

A few more tips:

• Use a recorder/app that you trust. Losing a recording is painful—and the anxiety of losing another can derail your most exciting creative moments. (“I hope this recorder is working. Good, it is... @#*! where was I?”)

• Audio quality matters when it comes to automatic transcription. If your recording has a lot of background noise or you’re speaking far away from the mic, the accuracy is going to drop. Consider using earbuds (better yet: Airpods), so you can worry less about where you’re holding the recorder.

• Find a comfortable space. Eventually you may get used to having people overhear your musings, but it’s a lot easier to let your mind “go for a walk” when you’re comfortable in your environment.

• Speaking of walking: why not go for a stroll? The pains of writing can have just as much to do with being stationary and hunched over. Walking gets your blood flowing—and your ideas, too.

• I have a lot of ideas, good and bad, while I’m thinking out loud and playing music at the same time (in my case, guitar—but I suspect it applies more broadly). There’s something about playing the same four-chord song on autopilot for the thousandth time that keeps my hands busy and leaves my mind free to wander.

The old ways of doing things—whether it’s with a keyboard or pen—still have their advantages. Putting words to a page can force a sort of linear thinking that is otherwise difficult to maintain. And when it comes to editing, it’s no contest: QWERTY or bust.

But for getting those first crucial paragraphs down (and maybe a few keystone ideas to build towards)? Consider talking to yourself. Even if you wind up with a transcript full of nothing but profanity—well, have you ever seen a transcript full of profanity? You could do a lot worse.

The Imitation Game

by

Eric Fritzius

 

 

As writers, finding inspiration to write can be a problem.  Perhaps we have a piece we’ve been working on for some time and it’s hit a wall.  We find ourselves at a loss for how to climb over that wall.  The very act of sitting down and staring at the paper (or screen, as these things go) can feel like the last thing we would ever want to do—no matter how many writers in the past have advised us to do precisely that.  My usual tactic to punch through such “blocks” is to turn to other creative projects, to work on something else for a while and get the creative juices flowing.  This can help with the wall-breaching process for the first project.  And when it doesn’t, at least I’ve been productive on another project.  If you don’t have another project ready at hand (or even if you do) you might consider another technique: inspiration by imitation. 

This is the point where many of you will be put off if not horrified by the idea of imitating the work of another writer as inspiration for your own work; writers often bristle at the notion that they are anything less than completely original in all output.  This is, of course, the fecal byproduct of a horse.  We learn through imitation in all aspects of life, but particularly in writing.  Don’t believe me?  Go back and have a gander at your earliest output and you’ll likely find a pale version of Janet Evanovich staring back at you (or, for me, Douglas Adams).  As the writer Voltaire once said, though: “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.  The most original writers borrowed from one another.  The instruction we find in books is like fire.  We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.” Even in the face of the words of a learned master, we resist the notion.  Plagiarism is, after all, a truly vulgar crime, and writing something that another person might point a finger at and say “that’s someone else’s idea” can fill us with dread.  Plagiarism is also not what I’m talking about.  I'm talking about imitation, not theft.

In the creative writing classes I regularly teach, imitation is part of the curriculum.  I direct my students to pieces of writing that contain, at their core, a universal concept that can be applied not only to the original author’s life, but to the lives of each and every person walking the planet.  The concept can be rewritten, customized to the life and experiences of a new writer and will produce an outcome that is completely different from the original, yet retain the basic format. 

For instance, there’s a wonderful prose piece called “The Things I’ve Lost” by writer Brian Arundel.  It’s one that is included in the text book I use for my class, The Practice of Creative Writing by Heather Sellers.  (Full disclosure, Ms. Sellers is the one who hipped me to the Voltaire quote above.  Hers is an excellent text on writing.) 

Please go now and read “The Things I’ve Lost” online.

Back?

Pretty awesome, wasn’t it?  In fact, it’s the sort of piece that should make you mad that you didn’t think of it first, because it’s so simple and perfect in concept, yet easily lends itself to nuance.  Mr. Arundel does a fine job of listing off actual physical items he has misplaced throughout his life, alongside observations of beliefs, ideals, illusions, and opportunities he’s similarly “lost” or abandoned along the way.  It becomes an autobiographical sketch of major aspects of his life in six paragraphs.  And I found it to be the kind of piece that, when I first read it, I wanted to get to the end of it quickly so I could rush away and start my own version because it just seemed like it would be fun to do so.  My students almost always choose to write their own versions too.  And because I’m generally a positive person, I also invite them to try their hand at a similar topic called “The Things I’ve Found.”  Both produce impressive results. Each is completely original while at the same time using Arundel’s basic format as its basis.

There are thousands of other pieces of writing out there that this technique be applied to as well.  You may find you start to see such opportunities without even looking for them.  However, another that Heather Sellers specifically cites for this treatment is the poem “Genealogy” by Betsy Sholl.  It’s another concept that we can each plug our own details into, re-configuring the format as we see fit. 

Imitation is, if nothing else, a great technique for writing warm-ups. You may find it can help in breaking through your creative blocks as well.  And, if not, you have at least been productive.  

Sellers' book includes other techniques for imitation games, such as using poems as scaffolding for producing new work.  I have not found this to be effective in my own writing, but your mileage may vary.

Now, if you still feel at odds with borrowing the format and ideas of another writer, you’re always welcome to credit them.  Poets and writers often include an (after…) parenthetical in their title to indicate the work they’re responding to, or by which they were inspired. 

I wish you impressive results.

Writing When You Don't Feel Like Writing

by

Stacy Tritt



Hello, blog readers. It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. I apologize for my long absence. But, I can explain, I swear. You see, I’ve had this excuse.

To begin, I want to give a disclaimer that I am not really writing a how-to blog so much as telling a story of what has worked for me recently to reclaim my creative writing when I haven’t felt like writing. By sharing my story, I hope you might find something that will work for you as well.

I said I had an excuse, and believe me, I’m full of excuses for not writing. There is one excuse that stands above all the rest, however, and I am sure some of you have used this excuse as well. I wouldn’t really call it writer’s block so much as creative straight-jacket syndrome.

It all started back in 2011 during my junior year of college. I was taking quite a few classes that required me to do this thing called “academic writing.” And night after night, I was reading and analyzing, writing essays and citing documents. One page after another. Then, when I would sit down to write something for myself, I found myself staring at a blank Word document. I might get a paragraph or two in, but all that by-the-books, almost-scientific approach to writing had dried up my creative juices and replaced them with analytical word vomit that saturated my sponge of a brain.

Fast forward a few years. I now work full time as a hotel manager. I write reports constantly. Add the massive number of hours I usually work, and, well, my same old excuse is still valid. My creative brain has been left out in the elements, going unnourished for so long that I feared it was dead. And the prolifically creative person I had once been had been replaced by a corporate American robot. If my middle-school self knew what I had become, she would scream, cry, and threaten to run away from home.

Being creative, writing, drawing, and dancing—things I once loved—had become an increasingly difficult chore. And it hurt. But still, I was unwilling to give up. I had to find a way to bring the joy of writing back into my life. So, I started journaling—something I hadn’t done regularly in about ten years. It was hard at first. At the end of a long day, I would sit down and write something short and boring:

“Long day at work today. Had to prep for the owner’s visit. Two extra reports due, and had to inspect rooms. Pretty tired. Splurged on some Starbucks, though, so that’s cool.”

There were nights when the last thing I felt like doing was sitting down to write about my day, but I made myself do it. I could not go to bed until I had written at least one sentence. After some time passed, it became easier. My entries gained some flair, and creative ideas started to come to mind while I wrote, and I started jotting down plot lines and character backstories—as well as doodling in the margins. My entries became much less tidy, much less about just me, and more about the creative being inside of me that was slowly coming back to life.

“Today was my day off. I walked around the front lawn with bare feet, the grass over-long because it has been raining so much that Rob hasn’t been able to cut it. The ground was so soft, and the grass so gentle against my heels, it felt like walking on a giant, fluffy marshmallow.”

Now, I’m not claiming any of my entries are writing gold, but they allowed me to start exercising my creative brain again. The simple act of writing just for me culminated into an ability to sit down and write again.

Creativity doesn’t always just happen. It’s something that must be practiced. And writing when you don’t feel like you have anything good to say is hard. Yet, journaling is fairly easy. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t feel the overwhelming need to go back and edit and reedit what you’ve just written before moving on to the next thought. Which is very liberating for me. So, now as I sit down to write, I’ve been trying to do it like a journal entry—get it all out, and then go back later to edit—something I have always struggled with. Without the practice of journaling, I don’t think I would’ve been able to do that. It’s a simple way to keep your creative mind fed and alive while you wade through mundane daily life. And keeping your creative mind alive and well is the difference between a week-long writer’s block dry spell, and a lifetime of thinking you’ve lost your creative voice.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I don’t know where you are in your creative journey or on your career path. But perhaps the two don’t have to be at such odds. What I hope my experience might teach you is not to give up hope. Your creativity won’t lie dormant forever—not if you begin to feed it, and nurse it, and spend time with it. It might not be easy, but it will be worth it. Keep trying. Keep writing. And support each other. That is the biggest gift we as writers can give one another—our support. Whether a novice or expert, we all need a little encouragement now and again. Journaling is my way of encouraging myself as a writer, and something I hope I don’t forget soon, because supporting ourselves is maybe even more important than supporting each other.

Writing Perfectionist Problems

by

Jessica Nelson

 



Everything I’ve read—every writer’s guide, every website geared toward writers—says the most important part of writing is to get it on paper. Don’t worry how sloppy it is. Don’t worry if it’s barely comprehensible. Just get it on paper. You can’t edit and polish if you have nothing to work with, right?

But what if you can’t get it on the paper?

Many of our IFW editors proclaim there is no such thing as writer’s block. (I’m looking at you, Rhonda Browning White.) But the little kid in me wants to throw a temper tantrum and scream, Yes, there is such a thing as writer’s block! There is, there is, there is! as if it can somehow excuse all the months I go without writing a word.

But I don’t think writer’s block is the real problem—at least not for people like me.

Let me tell you why. I had an English teacher in high school who, for his doctoral dissertation, studied the processes and styles of young writers. He told me something that I didn’t know about myself: I do the writing, editing, and polishing stages all at the same time. Meaning, that I write, edit, then polish what I want to say all in my mind before a single word ever appears on paper.

So when I open my Word document and can’t get the words from my brain to the page, it isn’t writer’s block, per se. Rather, it’s that I can’t find the perfect way to say what I want to say. And if I can’t say it perfectly at that moment, I can’t say it at all.

It’s not lack of inspiration or writer’s block. It’s that my perfectionism—the ingrained desire for my writing to be perfect on the first try—stops my fingers from flying and my story from being told.

It’s a struggle for me to just write down words for the sake of getting them on paper. It’s like someone telling my five-foot, un-athletic, chocoholic self that I have to jump over a twenty-foot tall wall to get to the brownies on the other side. I’d rather deny myself the brownies than fail in the attempt to get them.

My other writing flaw is that I have to write in chronological order. Translation: I have to write scenes (or in essay writing, the elements of the argument) in the order in which they occur in the story. I can’t skip around and come back to it later. I just can’t. It’s not the way my brain works.

So sometimes I have to cheat. Trick my brain into letting me get past these little idiosyncrasies of mine.

When I can’t say it perfectly at that moment, when I just can’t write it out, I write a note in that spot instead. Sometimes it’s a sentence in parentheses that says “Characters have a heart-to-heart here” or “This is where his big secret is revealed” or “Transition here.” Sometimes it’s a more detailed summary made in the margin with Microsoft Word’s comment function. But this method allows me to remember what I was going to write so I can come back to it later when I finally have the perfect words.

This same method sometimes helps when I have to work out of chronological order. In a way, it tricks my brain into thinking we’ve covered that section. Then my brain might let me move on to the part I am ready to write.

Every mind is unique. Even—perhaps especially—among writers. Sometimes the typical techniques and strategies don’t work for all of us. So we have to find our own shortcuts, our own techniques and strategies to work around our writing roadblocks.

What writing idiosyncrasies do you have? What different or strange technique works for you?