For a few weeks now I’ve been writing away on my WIP, just cranking it out like it was my job or something.  Then all of a sudden, I got spooked.

It all started when I reached this one critical chapter, and I’ve been scared stiff ever since.  I know exactly what needs to happen in the chapter, I only have this chapter and a little piece of another left to go, and yet I’m terrified.

All these sneaky little doubts keep cluttering my mind.  What if I write this chapter and it totally flops?  What if I can’t pull it off?  What if I only had a few good chapters in me and I used them all up already?

So I’ve been doing what I always do when I get scared: I’ve been reading a lot.  It’s a way of getting all those scary thoughts out of my head and distracting myself.  Kind of like the mental equivalent of leaving a nightlight on.

What about you?  What do you do when your inner writer gets scared silly?

Before I started writing seriously, before I even started writing fiction at all, I kept a journal.  I have journals dating back to when I was nine years old and my biggest concerns were dealing with the school bully or trying to figure out if The Boy liked me.  Of course, some notebooks have gotten lost over the years, and there are definitely some dry spells in there when I didn’t write at all, but between then and now I have a pretty good written record of what was pressing on my mind through the past twenty-or-so years.

OK, so I kept a journal.  So what?  I’ve learned several things from all this journal-writing and I’ve discovered that not only has it made me a better writer, it’s also made me a better thinker.  If you don’t keep a journal, I highly recommend you start, but before you do, read on to find out more about what you’ll gain from it.

1)  A journal can be whatever you want it to be.  There’s no law that says you have to keep a daily diary or that a journal must record your deepest, secretest thoughts.   The truth is, you can write whatever you want in your journal.  I write a lot of lists: to-do lists, lists of post topics for my blog, lists of character names or story ideas.  You name it… there’s probably a list like that in one of my notebooks.  I take my notebook with me when I go to talks or conferences and jot down notes or interesting quotes from the speakers.  I often find that seeing my notes on paper helps me better understand the concepts at hand.

Tip:  Make journal-writing fun.  Draw cartoons or doodles–iggi started out as a random doodle in one of my journals.  Clip funny pictures and paste them in your notebook.  Oh, and don’t forget… Stickers!

2)  Verbal spillage is OK.  Sometimes you just need your journal to be a catch-all for the junk that’s in your head.  Julia Cameron, of The Artist’s Way, advocates writing 3 pages longhand every morning (she calls them Morning Pages) to get all those mundane ideas out of our heads and onto paper.  Then once we’ve cleared our brains of the clutter, we’re ready to be creative.  I agree with her thinking, though I’ve loosened the requirements for myself.  I don’t always write 3 pages and I rarely do it in the morning because I’m just not functional until I’ve had my coffee.  But I think it’s a great idea to put your nagging thoughts and worries on paper to clear them from your mind.  Once I’ve written in my notebook, my thinking feels sharper, clearer, more focused.  I think that’s why I write so many lists… to get all those pesky ideas out of my head so I can think straight.

Tip:  Try not to let your inner censor interfere with your journal writing.  Toss the words on the page, then shut the notebook and trap them in there so your inner censor can’t judge.

3)  Longhand.  While some people might prefer keeping a journal on their computer or iPad or iPhone or what have you, I am a firm believer in writing longhand.  There are two reasons for this.  First, writing longhand allows your brain time to mull things over between when the thought leaves your mind and when it travels all the way down your arm to your pen.  Typing is more immediate and it’s a lot easier to type without thinking.  If the purpose of keeping a journal is to improve one’s thinking then it stands to reason that longhand would better serve the writer than typing would because longhand forces you to think things over.

Second, I find that handwriting is a great diagnostic tool.  My handwriting changes drastically depending on my mood and state of mind.  Even writers whose handwriting stays pretty stable will see subtle shifts in their print and script over time.  Looking through a notebook, I can quickly tell what mood I was in during a given time period based on how messy the writing is, how big the lettering is or how hard I pressed the pen.  These are all diagnostic clues that tell me what was going on between the lines when I was writing those words.

Tip:  If you use different colored pens, that’s another great insight to what your mood was.  After all, you must’ve chosen that color pen for a reason.

4)  Write something every day.  One of the great things about Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages concept is that by the time you’re done, you’ve already written 3 whole pages and it’s only the morning.  Granted, those pages may be nothing more than lists or gripes or worries but at least you’ve been writing.  I feel the same way about my notebook.  When I feel stressed out or intimidated by the computer, I pull out my notebook and start writing there.  I find it much easier to approach the computer if I already have something written.  If I’m just typing it up, it’s a lot less scary than having to face that blank-screen-of-death.  Writing in a notebook where I can be messy and make mistakes makes writing “no big deal” and the less of a big deal I make my writing, the more of it actually gets done.

Tip:  I used to keep my notebook on the floor right next to my bed so that when I woke up, I would literally trip over it and remember to do some writing.

Today’s Task:  If you don’t keep a journal, go to a store and pick out a notebook that you love, one that will be inviting and fun to write in.  Make your journal writing festive so invest in a pretty-colored pen or some stickers.  If you have old magazines lying around, clip some pretty pictures and paste them on the cover or in your journal.

Tell me, do you keep a journal or notebook?  Have you found that it helps you think more clearly when you sort ideas out on paper?

We’ve talked a lot about critique: forming a good group, giving critique, etc.  Now we come to the tricky subject.  What do you do when you find yourself on the receiving end of a critique?

Writers are a brave but fragile species.  After all, anyone who pours her soul out onto a piece of paper, no matter how thick-skinned she may want to be, has got to have some nerve endings somewhere.  As soon as we let our work out into the world we open ourselves to the possibility that someone might not like it and, let’s face it, getting our work squashed is painful.  The only reason we allow this pain to happen is because we want our work to get better.  But how do we, as writers, reconcile our desire to improve our work with our desire not… to hurt?

Below are some lessons I have learned which have helped take the edge off critique.

1)  It’s not personal.  This is probably the toughest piece of advice to swallow, but also the most important.  As writers we must remember that a critique of our work is not a commentary on us as people.  Instead, we must accept it for what it is: a critique of our work.

2)  Critique is like a bottle of wine, it needs time to breathe.  The temptation after a workshop session is to go home and read all the comments right away, but don’t do it.  It’s too close.  Too soon.  This is especially true if the critique fell on either the extreme positive or extreme negative end of the spectrum.  The more emotionally charged the critique session, the more time you need to gain objectivity.

3)  There’s no such thing as a perfect critique.  Sometimes overly-positive critiques can be just as painful as the negative ones.  You’re probably saying “What?!?”  After all, wouldn’t any writer want to have someone else say their work is perfect?  I myself find positive critiques to be especially crippling because rather than telling me what needs fixing, a positive critique leaves me thinking: “Now what?”  We’re writers, after all.  It’s in our nature to be perfectionists and having someone tell us our work is perfect can sometimes do more harm than good.  So if you find yourself feeling disappointed after an overwhelmingly positive critique, remember this: anyone who tells you your work is perfect is either lying or insane.  In either case, do you really want to heed their opinion?  Which brings me to our next point.

4)  Critiques are not commandments handed down from on high.  They’re just opinions, and sometimes opinions are wrong.  Self-serving writers who want nothing more out of a critique session than a glowing audience tend to latch on to this advice.  They chalk up all negative critiques as being someone’s misguided opinion and fail to hear what their critique buddies are saying.  But writers who are really serious about their work often need this point hammered into their brains.  Critiques are just people’s opinions and sometimes opinions might conflict or someone might misunderstand.  If you find yourself thinking “What the…?” about someone else’s comments on your work, allow for the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they didn’t get it.  Of course, if ten people all say the same thing…

5)  Learn to identify critique buddies who are there to help you and those who are there to help themselves.  Then ditch the latter.  A good critique session should include feedback that feeds the writer and leaves the writer wanting to hurry home and keep writing.  A critique session that tears a writer down so other people can feel “smart” or leaves the writer feeling empty and directionless do not serve the writer being critiqued.

Curious as to how good you are at taking critique?  Take this quiz.

So, what do I do when I get that stack of papers and have to make sense of critiques?  Here’s a quick look into my process:

1. First I let the pile of papers sit for at least a week.  Maybe longer.
2. Next, I go through and read all the end comments and overall notes.
3. After that, I go through the margin notes, copying important ones down on a clean copy so that I can see all the comments next to each other (that way if two people have differing opinions on a particular point, I can see that contrast).
4. Later, I’ll let the comments sit again and mull them over.
5. Finally, I take my one copy with everyone’s notes and my stack of end comments and start implementing the changes, usually starting with the easy ones first and working my way up to the tougher edits.

What about you?  What’s your critique process and what do you do to ease the sting of negative comments?

Today’s guest post is by Merrilee Faber who recently hosted a Creativity Workshop on her blog Not Enough Words.  In this post, she approaches the revision process from a creative standpoint.  Thank you, Merrilee!

But first, a short bio.  Merrilee Faber lives in the sand and fly infested west of Australia, where she battles giant spiders and venomous snakes every day in a desperate attempt to survive.  When not defending her family from Australia’s deadly denizens, she tries to earn a crust by telling people what to do, with moderate success.  She is a consummate liar, but gets away with it by calling it “fiction”.  You can get to grips with Merrilee at her blog Not Enough Words (http://notenoughwords.wordpress.com).

Revision would have to be the least popular part of the writing process.  You’ve slaved for weeks, months (even years!) to produce this manuscript; through the good days and the bad days and the why-didn’t-I-take-up-cat-herding-it-would-be-easier days. 

Now here you are, exhausted, drained, a rumpled, coffee-stained manuscript in your hands, facing the realization that you are not finished yet.  That there is so much more work to do.

Is it any wonder our tired muse rebels?  So we rush through revision, changing a word here, a scene there, cutting great chunks out of the story because we have to.
After all this time we want nothing more than to be complete.  So we tuck the muse away and approach revision like a dirty job that has to be done.

But revision can be, should be, as creative a process as writing the first draft.  The revision stage is an opportunity to turn your story up a notch.  And this is something you cannot do without engaging your creative side.

So how do you go about creative revision?

Distance
Let the landscape of your story become unknown.  If you are too familiar with the story, it is more difficult to write fresh.  I recommend at least a month, and that month spent thinking and writing other stories.

We tend to fall in love with prose, and don’t want to change what sounds good.  But you must be prepared to scrap everything, even those sentences you love, to improve your story.  And you can only do this as a dispassionate observer.

Question every decision
Fiddling with word choice and rearranging scenes and phrases is just cosmetic.  While it’s nice to tidy, you need to go deeper.  Get your hands dirty. 

Look at every choice you made while writing.  Was it the right choice?  What can you change to make this moment/character/scene stronger, tighter, have more impact?  Dig beneath the surface and find more meaning, more impact from the events in your story.  Keep that inspiration coming, because more often than not, the second idea is better than the first.

 Build depth and complexity
Revision is the time when you should be adding metaphor.  Placing foreshadowing for critical events.  Developing and strengthening your theme.  Retooling your characters to add subtle layers to their psychology.  Don’t be content with what you already have.  Add layer upon layer to your narrative.  Add touches of colour and voice.  Build a web of character and event and place so tight that no-one can escape the clutches of your story.

Make every word pull its weight
You are wordy.  Don’t deny it.  Embrace the fact, and then get out the hacksaw.  90% of your adjectives can go, and 99% of your adverbs.  There will be repetition everywhere.  Say it once, say it right.  Bin the rest.

This may not sound creative, but this is where you use your creativity as a fine-pointed tool.  Slice delicately.  Excise, tune, think about every phrase, every word choice you have made.  Does this word or phrase convey the tension, the impact of the moment?  How can I say it stronger?

And of course, now is the time to get rid of all the clichés.  It’s fine to use them in the first draft – they’re fast and simple and you don’t need to think about them.  But leaving clichéd phrases and ideas in the final manuscript is a crime against literature, and even worse, it’s boring.  Don’t be a bore.

Revising creatively leads to a stronger manuscript.  If you approach this important stage without your creativity engaged, you are short-changing your story. 

So next time you are facing a first draft that needs review, let go of that feeling of dread.  Approach the revision stage with joy, knowing that you are still creating.  That your inspiration is just as important now as it was when you started to write.