The Worst Writing Advice by Bonnie Le Hamitlon

I think the worst writing advice I’ve ever been given is to write every day. I know some people who are yelling heresy right now but hear me out. I have several very good reasons why this is bad advice.

1.  Not everyone in the world has time to write every day. Some people have to earn their living by some other means and or have a busy family life. Or like me, can’t always concentrate enough to write. Not everyone has the ability to sit at home every day and just write. Period.

2.  Sometimes life gets in the way. Accidents happen, loved ones (or you) can get sick and require a trip the doctor or hospital. Stuff happens. Accept that.

3.  Finally, it isn’t the end of the world if you don’t write every day.

I view this whole “write every day” thing in the same vein as the adage about having a bowel movement every day. Until you’re feeling the urge but are unable to produce anything, you don’t have a problem.

That said, there is a reason people say you should write every day. And the reason is PRACTICE. That's right, practice. Writing is a talent, but it is also a skill, and skill takes work just like playing an instrument does. You can have all the talent in the world, but its worth diddlysquat if you don’t perfect it.

The hard part is to recognize first that it isn’t always possible to “practice” every day, and that sometimes just “playing the scales” is all you can manage.

To put that in a writing prospective, well, sometimes life happens. Even I have days where I don’t write a single word and I live alone. I’ve written about some of those times (think ADD). But I know other people have other things that come up. Konnie can relate a mountain “something came up” stories.

So, you didn’t write today. Its not the end of the world, or your writing career. You only have a problem if the non-writing goes on for weeks, months, or even worse years. In weeks or months, you are unlikely to forget the skills you already learned. While in years of non-writing, I promise, you could forget some of those skills.

I know this from experience.

I started writing in grade school and wrote consistently until I graduated from high school, then life took over and I didn’t write much of anything for 14 years.

After so many years of not writing, I’d forgotten a ton of grammar rules, and let’s face it, I was never very good at spelling – ever! (Thank God for Spellcheck!) When I started writing again I had to relearn the very basics. And once I got that down, I learned there were things about writing I’d never learned before; I’m still learning the craft of writing today.

But absolutely do not fret if it is just a day or two that you don’t manage to write. Don’t fret it if you skip one or two days of writing a week. You’re fine.

You do need start worrying when it goes on for month or longer but there are ways to combat that.

First you need to recognize what the issue is.

Some issues I’ve had with writing are:

1. The story isn’t working out in some way, needs work, and I’m not sure how to fix it.

a.  Set it aside, give it time, work on some other story, eventually (and yes it can take years) the answer will come to you for the one you’re blocked on, promise.

2.   You have let fear or anxiety get in your way.

a.   I know I’ve been there, it's hard and scary to put your work out there. We’ve all been there. You are not alone. Relax, take a breath, and start writing. If it helps, write about your fears.

3.  You have stupidly been reading something by a favorite author and have decided you will be NEVER be able to write like that.

a.  First, you can’t write like someone else. You have to write from the heart, ergo you have to write like you, so you will never write like your favorite author. You may be able to learn some tips from their writing style, but you still have to write like you.

b.  Second, comparing your writing to something already published is like comparing your everyday life to someone else’s highlights reel on Facebook. You have no idea how many stories she discarded or how many edits she went through before she got published. You are seeing her highlights and comparing that to your daily grunge. I'm telling you, no one looks good in that comparison. Stop doing it.

Happy writing everyone! 😊

The Handiness of being Unique by Konnie Enos

I reached my destination and grabbed my purse, placing the straps on my shoulder. Then I got my water bottle and my keys. All these things were on my right side so that is where they were when I got out of my car.

I walked into the building and up to a table where we were to sign in and receive a raffle ticket. Most people would empty their right hand to sign in.

Me?

My left side and conveniently empty hand was nearest the table. “Oh I’ll just use my left.”

The lady passing out raffle tickets said, “Well it’s legible anyway.”

“Of course. I’m ambi.”

And that’s not the first time in my life I’ve had to sign left-handed. Once I was in the ER and they had just stuck an IV in my right hand when one of the staff members asked me for a signature.

“Can my husband do it?”

“No.”

“Oh well, okay.” I sighed the paper left handed.

“This is perfectly legible.”

“I know. I’m ambi.”

I’ve heard of people who were ambidextrous, including one president, but I’ve never met any others.

Okay, technically, I’m the mirror of right handed Bonnie.

To this day I can remember our first grade teacher telling us to pick up whatever we were to be writing or drawing with and then getting on my case because I hadn’t picked up my implement up in the right hand.

I couldn’t understand how my hand wasn’t the correct hand to use. Was I supposed to use someone else’s hand?

That right and left business confused me for years.

Just try getting directions from me.

I’m actually pretty good at figuring my way around while my husband can get lost just turning a corner. I’d give my husband directions, as in turn right, or left, which ever direction I was thinking was the correct way, at the corner so he’d go to turn the way I said.

“That’s the wrong direction!”

“That’s the way you said to turn!”

“Well I said the wrong way, turn the other direction.”

Just pointing didn’t work because he had to keep his eyes on the road so we developed our own code. This-a-way means right (front passengers are on the right side in the car). That-a-way means left. Our kids grew up with this so they will give directions using these terms.

Our teacher did get my writing with my right hand but it wasn’t neat or very legible until I put a lot of practice into filling reams notebooks, over several years, just to get it neat enough to read.

Then out of curiosity I tried my left hand.

No practice at all and you could barely tell the difference.

Since then I’ve had people tell me a number of interesting things like I handle scissors backwards.

Uh? Oh, I guess I do. But handling them the correct way is awkward for me. I suppose if I’d ever been handed left handed scissors and been allowed to use them with my left hand I wouldn’t use them upside down.

I’ve also been told I use handheld can openers backwards, and in fact this is the reason I could never successfully use those tiny military openers. They relied on you turning one way to twist it around the can and the opposite way to get it off the can. I can only twist the way to get it off the can, not to open the can.

I’m a lefty in a right handed world.

I even had a doctor tell my I’m naturally left handed. He was a specialist in carpal tunnel syndrome and was doing nerve conductivity tests on both my wrists. He asked me three times if I was right or left handed.

Since I generally use my right hand I told him right, but when he kept asking I finally said that I was ambi.

Then he said, “Generally speaking the hand with most nerve damage is your dominate hand. For you it’s your left, that’s why I kept asking which hand was dominate.”

It was after this declaration that Bonnie and I even learned such a thing as mirror twins existed and what they were.

Funny learning about something and realizing you fit in that category. Then I found out my primary care physician is also a mirror twin. She’s the right handed twin.

But I think the most unusual thing of all is two of my five children are also ambidextrous. My youngest daughter and my youngest son.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Mirror Twin Distractions by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Living with ADD isn’t easy and being a writer and living with ADD can be the pits. I think my life would be a whole lot easier if I didn’t have to deal with ADD.

More than once this last week I caught myself getting distracted from what I was doing each time I took a break to use the facilities or get more water. At some point or other I would notice something that needed done, or remember something I was going to do, and, instead of a couple minutes away from my computer I’d be more like twenty or longer, i.e. long enough the thing went to sleep.

But if that weren’t bad enough, I couldn’t concentrate on one manuscript! I’d get thinking about changes I needed to make on my science fiction series and open it up only to have my brain switch gears to one of two other incomplete novels I have and some changes or additions I need to make to them. Except if I opened either of those, my brain would switch back to the sci-fi.

In other words, I never got much of anything done even though my brain was actively working on my various stories – I doubt anyone could write about A and B when their brain was thinking about X and Y. I personally found it disconcerting when I had the story about A and B open, and suddenly my brain had the story about X and Y running through my thoughts and I very nearly inserted the new details for X and Y’s story into A and B’s story, which would have been more than a little weird since one is sci-fi and the other a contemporary romance. 

  

And adding to my problems with concentrating on just one story was my problems with sticking to just one task until I was done. More than once I caught myself stopping in the middle of the room, on my way back from the bathroom, trying to remember what I was going to do next, and when I did remember something to do, I’d start doing it and suddenly remember what I’d been doing before I got up, either that or I’d go back to what I’d been doing and I'd suddenly remember that I had something else I was going to do before I got back to it.

More than once it was my empty stomach or water bottle which finally reminded what I was going to do before returning to my computer.

None of which helped me because while I realized all sorts of tweaks that needed done to three different manuscripts this past week, I didn’t get a whole lot done toward actually executing any of those changes.

On the other hand, Konnie actually managed to get some writing done this last week either, more than I did anyway, which for her is an improvement, but let’s face it, her life is so much busier than mine, which is why she’s usually the one who doesn’t get a lot of writing done in a week.

Time zone wise I’m an hour earlier than Konnie is, but she beats me up every morning, because she’s up before the crack of dawn, whereas I sleep in. Typically, when most people are heading out the door for the day, I’m just crawling out of bed, while Konnie was heading out the door around the time most people are getting up in the morning, and she’s constantly busy from the moment she gets up in the morning until she finally shuts off her computer and goes to sleep each night.

I spend the majority of my time around the house, with the only noise being when I turn on the TV or the stereo. At Konnie’s house, noise erupts anytime someone so much as walks past the house. With, I think the current count is five, dogs I have a tendency to cut phone calls with my sister short because that pack started barking again.

Konnie on the other hand lives in that racket, and lives with her family, so there is always something going on, and always people talking or doing something, and it only gets quiet around there after like eleven o’clock at night, but their mornings start around four-thirty or five. And she not only works in all that chaos, she’s in charge of it!

So, while I don’t get a lot of writing done because my brain won’t focus on one project she doesn’t get a lot of writing done because her family requires so much of her attention.

As kids, living together, our lives were very similar, but things changed because we now live such different lives as adults.

Happy writing everyone. 😊

Momma Bear Got to Roar by Konnie Enos

I’m sure any good mother would be protective of their children when the need arises. When you have children who are disabled in any way that protectiveness goes into overdrive. I should know. I’m the mother of five wonderful children and they all have their individual trials, including one on the Autism spectrum (high functioning) and two with health challenges, one of those major ones.

With her long list of diseases and conditions she has faulty collagen, loose joints, and issues with her heart, and her digestive track not functioning as it should. All thanks to EDS, Mast cell disease, Lupus and Gastroparesis. And those are just the major highlights of her list.

Over the last eight months she’s been in and out of hospitals and going from one doctor to another. Sometimes as much as four in one week.

This last month has been more of a nightmare. She’s been to the ER every single week, as much as a couple of times. Then the week before Spring Break she went back to the ER and they admitted her.

Things went well the first couple of days. They seemed to listen to her about her reactions to medicines and then they determined her issues seemed to require surgery.

Things went downhill from there.

The surgery was on Sunday. By Wednesday they had not given her any nourishment of any kind and were concerned that her blood sugar was so low.

NO DUH! You aren’t feeding her!

Then four, yes FOUR doctors invaded her room and made every effort to brow beat her into submitting to their treatment plan and when that wasn’t working one of them took me out of the room and suggested she needed a psychiatric evaluation.

I not only told him in no uncertain terms my daughter was of sound mind, but I also told him he was NOT paying any attention to the fact she had Mast cell disease. She AMA’d (she signed out of the hospital Against Medical Advise) shortly after that.

As she left one of the doctor’s, expressing that he thought she was making the wrong choice said, “I hope we don’t see you back here anytime soon.”

By Friday it became clear, from the pain she would have to return to a hospital, but she refused to go back to the one she’d just left. So we found another one. (Thankfully this is big city and it was easy to do.)

I can say this much for the staff at this hospital. They were very thorough in running tests to figure out what the problem was and seemed to listen to her about her reactions. One of those tests required her to go under anesthesia again. Thankfully it also helped them find and fix the problem.

The problems arose after that.

As they were preparing her for that test, she said she was feeling nauseous. After the procedure she started throwing up.

Every doctor and nurse we came into contact with the rest of that day insisted it was because she’d been under anesthesia totally ignoring the fact the nausea started BEFORE they took her in to do the procedure.

I had gone home to get some sleep but my dear daughter called me back with a text. She was still throwing up.

I had to find the nurse and tell her to disconnect the medicines being pumped into her by IV.

She hasn’t thrown up since.

She spent the next day refusing all treatment.

The doctors and nurses repeatedly told her it was her choice while also stressing she would die if she didn’t continue treatment.

While my husband and I were visiting with her one of the doctors came in and tried to get her to submit to their treatment plan.  

According to my husband I was rather thorough in chewing him out when I told him the failings of his plan.

I know I told him she couldn’t move and was throwing up while they were pumping all that medicine into her and she only started getting better when she stopped all of it. I also again, reminded him, she has Mast cell disease.
All I could think was that when the patient it reduced to a nearly vegetative state and is lying there repeatedly throwing up when they have had zero nourishment in over twenty-four hours THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG! When all of that slowly subsides when the patient STOPS ALL medicines, THEN one can conclude continuing treatment IS NOT the best plan for the patient.

Yes, I went a little Mamma Bear on him.

And yes, I helped her AMA right out of there.

Yes, she has been improving daily since then.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Also Posted on my daughter's, May Enos' blog, Price of Genetics (it will be up at 9 a.m. April 18th).

Critiquing is Hardest by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Writing is hard. Editing is harder. Critiquing is hardest.

I once told a guy who asked me to critique his “chapter” that it read more like a synopsis of a novel then a chapter of book. He refused to talk to me again. And I thought I was being gentle. I did tell him he had a good concept, but that he needed more practice with showing the story.

Now I’m faced with the dilemma of an excellent novel with too much detail in the fight scenes. I’m talking literal blow by blows, but I have very few fight scenes in my stories, and certainly no battle scenes, I’m not exactly sure I’m the right person to tell this author to pare it down a little. There were spots so detailed it’s boring.

Yeah, I’ve done that (not in a fight scene), back before I learned better. I just never realized until reading this unpublished novel what all my friends, and Konnie, had been talking about. I’d never had to read someone else’s far too detailed scene, and there is an enormous difference between writing such a scene and reading it.

Back when I made this mistake, I thought the more detailed it was, the easier it would be for the reader to “see” the scene. I couldn’t be more wrong! The more a story is bogged down in details the harder it is for the reader to “see” the scene in their head. I found myself skimming over such sections in the novel I'm critiquing, I just couldn’t handle it, which also meant I wasn’t helping the author fix the issue.

It also made me eternally grateful to a friend who once helped me edit two pages of description down two paragraphs. Konnie knows the scene. I was trying to show the reader one hideous room, in detail. Konnie even said it was boring and that it took too long. In writing, general descriptions go a long way, but you also must have descriptions.

Anton Chekov has a famous quote about not telling the reader the moon was shining but rather show the glint of moonlight on broken glass. Or something like that. Description does take more words than simply telling, but it doesn’t have to take up a whole page or more. Limit it!

The trick is give the reader enough detail that they can fill in the rest on their own. The reader doesn’t need minute descriptions of a scene or the actions of the characters, just general descriptions. And the reader certainly doesn’t need a blow by blow of a fight scene.

I have one where the hero’s dogs come to the rescue of the heroine, and about all I have is them jumping on the bad guy and clamping their teeth into him, then the hero comes running and the bad guy gets slammed into the wall and the hero gets in his face and tells him he’s fired and to get out.

And I think that’s the longest fight scene I have in any of my stories. Earlier in that same story the hero was in altercation with his brother, and all the hero did was slug the idiot and walk away.

I do have a couple altercations in the novel I’ve been editing the last few months, but while in one I mention one of the secondary characters “throwing punches” I do not mention in detail every punch, and the only mention I have of who he is fighting is calling them “the miscreants.” We’re talking about one paragraph in a scene that starts with the victim screaming in terror and the good guys running into the fray and ends with the miscreants being carted off by the police.

I could have gotten a lot more detailed, but what more was needed? The heroine’s cousin was fighting hard and connecting only with the miscreants and not with the hero or his family, who also entered the fray. Enough said, beyond later mentioning the black eyes a few of the miscreants ended up with.

In the other fight scene, the fight itself is a couple small paragraphs, leading into it, and the aftermath takes longer. Its not that I don’t have details in the fight scenes, I just don’t have minute detail.

I didn’t need to give a blow by blow, because a blow by blow would have been too tedious to read. And tedious detracts from the story. None of us want that, especially the readers.

The problem is how do you tell a talented aspiring author they need to cut the detail without discouraging them from writing? Anyone?

Happy Writing everyone. 😊

Finding the Writing Motivation By C. Hope Clark

Motivation means different things to people, but for many it is so elusive that they give up on it. Some are afraid they don’t have it. Others are afraid they’ll mistake a quick nice feeling for motivation. Some worry they don’t understand how to maintain it.

            Many of my readers ask where I get my motivation from. It’s not magic, and it’s not science. For a writer, motivation comes about through the culmination of its several parts.

1)      Having an original idea.

In reality, most of us fear of being too original. Sure, we talk about having that grandiose idea or remarkable brand, but seriously, are we willing to be SO original that we are unlike anything else out there? Isn’t that scary? What if we are so different that nobody gets us?

Experts and celebrities bank on their originality, making money because of their talent and the fact so many people want to be like them. However, we have to avoid emulating someone else’s success so much that we lose our originality. Following someone else’s path means we often take the safe route and latch ahold of someone else’s wagon. We call that copycatting. The trouble is, there’s nothing motivational in being a copycat. We don’t totally scratch that itch.

On the other hand, when we snare a grand idea, and are daring enough to strike out with it, we can become flooded with a deep motivation that carries us so much further than an idea similar to someone else’s. There isn’t any energy in playing someone else’s game.

2)      Being organized.

We can be busy or we can be organized. And if the busyness feels frantic, stressful and out of control, then we’ve indeed lost control of our direction . . . our motivation. We are answering to all sorts of stimuli instead of focusing on a plan making us ineffective. Disorganization quickly dilutes motivation.

So the point is to establish your goals for each year. Complete the novel? Publish the novel? Submit to 25 magazines? Attend three conferences and take a class. Identify your writing strengths and weaknesses, then make concerted plans to fix the weaknesses. Wake up in the morning knowing what you will do that day toward your annual goals. Keep a calendar and stick to it, helping (enforcing) family and friends to better understand the seriousness of your mission.

You cannot get anywhere without knowing specifically where you need to go. Don’t say you’ll write more. List the word count, number of chapters, and period of time to complete them. Define your tasks in measurements you can be accountable for.

3)      Being focused.

The world today is about instant gratification, easy wins, and keeping a tally while watching our neighbor. It’s about writing a paragraph then checking email. Writing another then reading Facebook. Attempting one more paragraph then reading a new blog post.

Being focused means just that. . . working uninterrupted. And don’t blame others for interrupting you. They can’t without your permission. Leave the phone out of the room and don’t open social media. Mute the sound so you don’t hear incoming messages or updated headlines.

Then fall into your work. Become engulfed in it. That’s where you find magic. That’s where you tap that stupid mythical muse so many talk about. It comes from you being proactively focused, not from some invisible feeling randomly striking you. There’s almost nothing as satisfying as coming out of a straight, multi-hour writing afternoon with a couple thousand words under your belt. That doesn’t happen with a muse. It happens with purpose and sweat.

What is motivation?

Motivation is having an idea, planning how you’ll achieve it, then diving in deeply to create it. And the amazing thing about it is that the more you’re able to achieve using this formula, the more empowered you become. In other words, the more motivated.

I simplify. I say no to things. When I feel out or sorts or too busy to get everything done, I start culling the obstacles in my path that are inhibiting my motivation. If writing is your goal, then whenever you’re doing something that’s NOT writing, ask yourself if it’s necessary or did it just slip in the way. Then discard it. Decide what really isn’t needed in your writing plan, and what’s in your way of doing something meaningful.

Learn to feel excited about your writing again. Feel excited about the direction you’ve decided for yourself. With a mission, and a plan to achieve it, you once again love reporting to work, even accepting the parts of your work that aren’t your favorite. Make your work become play again.

BIO: C. Hope Clark’s latest release, Newberry Sin, comes out late April 2018. It’s the fourth in the Carolina Slade Mysteries, and Hope’s eighth mystery. Hope is also founder of FundsforWriters.com where her newsletter reaches 35,000 readers. The site was selected for Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers . . . for the past 17 years. www.chopeclark.com 

My Least Favorite Holiday by Bonnie Le Hamilton

This coming weekend will be my very least favorite holiday of the year. I so detest this one certain day of the year (or rather the holiday associated with it) that when I wrote my last post I originally said it was one holiday I’d never put in any of my stories. Konnie corrected me in the nick of time. I do have one story with this horrendous holiday mentioned.

And I have no idea why I forgot it. It was the first novel I actually finished writing. Though I also know when I wrote that story, I had wanted to ignore this one day, but according to the time line I had worked out, things happened on this most annoying day of the year.

Can you tell I can’t stand it?

I have actually tried hard to ignore it, and when possible, I’d hole up in my room to avoid my family on this one day of the year, when I could. However, if it was any day other than Saturday, I had to interact with others, unfortunately. Though now days, the only day I can’t avoid contact with people is well, usually Sunday, except, thankfully, the first Sunday in April is when my church holds their semi-annual world-wide conference, which I can view on my computer; I can hole up! Yeah. I can avoid any and all persons acting the fool, unless they happen to call me.

My father did that one a few times. Actually one year, Tom and I received big news on April 1^st. We weren’t sure any of our family would believe us when we called them, but we did try. I remember being totally frustrated with my father, the consummate prankster, who refused to believe it wasn’t a prank.

I ended the call before I started yelling at him and called Konnie. When I told her the news, she believed me right away, and when I told her how frustrating our father had just been she not only agreed he was being pigheaded, she got off the phone with me and called him and told him off!

My quiet, shy twin told off our father! Of course, she knew, I’m Bonnie. I don’t joke, I don’t tease, and most importantly, I can’t stand April Fool’s Day!

Now, Easter is another issue. As a good Christian, Easter, like Christmas, is important. And since this Easter falls on Conference weekend, I have two things I’m looking forward to, and will enjoy, on a day I usually wish wouldn’t happen.

And this is something else we need to consider when adding holidays into our stories. How do the characters feel about the holiday? How will they respond to the holiday? Do they have any traditions for that holiday? Do their traditions differ from each other? Are they compatible? Or not?

All of these can affect how you portray the holiday in your story, and how your characters will act.

Happy Writing everyone! 😊