What I’m read­ing: Cold Wind, by C.J. Box

Con­test Clue Alert! : Hope you all had a chance to visit Kathy Bennett’s Inter­ro­ga­tion Room yes­ter­day. (Note: Kathy just informed me she had trou­ble post­ing the inter­view yes­ter­day, but it’s up there now. If you tried to find it yes­ter­day, we both apol­o­gize. Since I’m out of town and have very lit­tle com­puter time, things aren’t quite “nor­mal” when it comes to on-line issues.)

Joe Pike, a char­ac­ter in Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole series has red arrows tat­tooed on his del­toids. Accord­ing to Pike, they remind him life is about mov­ing forward.

Often, read­ers think that writ­ers sim­ply sit down at the com­puter each day and pound out another chap­ter of the man­u­script. Whether or not this actu­ally hap­pens, it’s still a com­mon goal. Oh, it might not be a chapter—maybe it’s a scene, or a word count goal, but ulti­mately, we want to move for­ward every day.

If you’re an out­liner or a plot­ter, you prob­a­bly have your game plan as soon as you open that man­u­script doc­u­ment. But what if you don’t have that nice ref­er­ence file? Since I nei­ther out­line nor plot in advance, I thought I’d share some tips that work for me. (Your  mileage may vary—and these will not nec­es­sar­ily work if you’re on deadline.)

1. Under­stand your own cir­ca­dian rhythm. Know what time of day your pro­duc­tiv­ity is high, and keep that time clear for writing.

2. Deal with your dis­trac­tions. There are those who say, “I won’t look at my email until I’ve writ­ten my quota.” That may work for them, but if you’re not going to be able to focus because you’re wor­ried about what’s pil­ing up in your inbox, then you’re cut­ting back on your pro­duc­tiv­ity. Same goes for social net­work­ing, or what­ever “non-writing” things you have in your sched­ule. If know­ing the toi­lets need clean­ing is going to dis­tract you, then get your chores out of the way.

3. Get a run­ning start. When I fin­ish a scene, I print it out and read it in bed, mark­ing up trou­ble spots. And trust me, print­ing the pages will help you notice things that aren’t appar­ent on the screen. Then, when I’m ready to work, I start by fix­ing what­ever I’ve noted. This will bring me into the story again, and I’m ready to move for­ward. If I haven’t fin­ished a scene, then I’ll sim­ply read what­ever I wrote the day before to get back into the feel of the book.

Nook Con­test Ques­tion #9 Remem­ber to use the Con­tact Form to answer the ques­tion, and put “Nook Con­test” in your response.) If I had to end up on a real­ity tele­vi­sion show, what might it be? (You didn’t miss the clue alert at the begin­ning of this post, did you?)

And on with today’s post

4. Know where you’re going with the next scene. This is as close to plot­ting as I ever get. For exam­ple, in the case of the bones, which I men­tioned in Monday’s post, I’ll be plan­ning the log­i­cal next step. Gor­don will want to talk to the peo­ple who live on the prop­erty where the bones were found. I’ll know who’s going to be in the scene, and (I hope) what points he’ll need to cover. I know at least one or two ques­tions he’ll be ask­ing in his posi­tion as a cop, and I know that because he knows this fam­ily, there will be some social inter­ac­tion as well. Remem­ber, a scene has to exist for more than one reason.

5. Start writ­ing. Don’t worry too much about per­fec­tion at this point. Get it on the page. You can eval­u­ate it later. (see step 3 above)

6. Know when to stop. Some days, you might not hit your writ­ing goal. Other days, you might sur­pass it. One excel­lent tip I got that I’m happy to share is, “Don’t stop when you’re stuck; stop when you know what’s hap­pen­ing next.” There’s noth­ing more excit­ing than start­ing off a writ­ing day eager to get down all the things you know have to hap­pen. I can’t say I’m always suc­cess­ful with this one—many’s the time I’ve stopped a scene with a character’s phone ring­ing, or a knock at the door, and I have no idea who’s call­ing, or who’s knock­ing. But then, if it was easy, every­one could do it.