Writing Tip:The first rule of intelligent tinkering is ...?

 "...to save all the parts," says Paul Ehrlich (but then, he was a physician and scientist.)

In novel writing, I hereby declare that the first rule of intelligent tinkering is:

Saul Steinberg

I hardly dare tell you how much and how often I've tinkered with the first three chapters of Falling Awake

O, that way madness lies.

I have to ask myself WHY DO I DO IT?

Once I've completed the novel (she says, optimistically) the first three chapters will surely change anyway.

Tinkering totally inhibits any forward progress with the rest of the story and saps me of inspiration and enthusiasm.

SO - NO MORE.

(but there must be a better word than 'flaming' I could use on line 1, page 4? Let me just consult Mr. Roget and his oversized Thesaurus...)

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH...

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.

...said somebody or other - errrm, Alan Dean Foster - yes, a writer. Of course.

Perhaps I'm not typical then?

Quite good at getting down to writing, brilliant at avoiding marketing and self-publicising - aside from blogging, that is. If that counts.

In my most humble opinion, there is procrastination and there is procrastination.

 Now THAT, above, is procrastination.

MY sort of procrastination is High Class Procrastination - that is to say, it's not sharpening pencils, tidying my desk, spending too long on Facebook and Google+, generally hanging out.

My sort of procrastination is having something to do that I don't want to do (re-reading and sending off my novel to publishers) and then getting in a piece of work from a client with a tight deadline AND BEING RELIEVED.

Now, NOBODY should be able to accuse me of procrastination because this is a job that must be done.

But somebody does. Every time.

ME!

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

Elmore Leonard. I need some of his...whatever it is...determination, pragmatism, perseverance, striving for perfection...today.

For over a month now I've been in possession of really valuable, constructive notes from a published author who definitely knows what she's talking about. She's reviewed Of Night And Light (the novel) for me and I think I agree with every single one of her suggestions - and that's not just me being biddable. It was, at the same time, hugely heartening to sense her genuine enjoyment of my work.

In fairness to me, since I received those notes I've been inordinately busy...but now I'm not. For the past three or four days I've been finding lots of different things that needed doing before I started the rewrite.

Urgently.

I've run out of those as well.

Farrah Penn

Here are my excuses:

I do have the feeling, when I've put my heart and soul into a long piece of writing, that I've given my all. I do worry that a rewrite may make it lose its passion and freshness. I am concerned that I'll begin to hate it, every bit of the story and the characters I've so lovingly created.

But most of all, it seems like a...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                lonely slog.

But hey, I have the choice. I could NOT rewrite and it will never get published!

 OR...

5 little known things that could affect your screenwriting

Expert screenwriter Caroline Coxon's tried and tested ways concerning how not to write screenplays.

* Free gift: Bonus advice at the end of this blog, born of many years experience.

1. Spend time writing a blog about procrastination.

This is an excellent way of not writing screenplays because you feel as though you're doing something useful and you can kid yourself that it's just a preliminary writing exercise to get your brain into gear.

2. Write a To-Do List 

An absolutely foolproof way of not writing a screenplay, even if you put that task right at the top of the list, because it helps you to create previously unthought of reasons to explain why you can't get on with writing a screenplay.

3. Sharpen your pencils

This is a particularly useful way not to write screenplays if you have lots of pencils. You can pretend to yourself that you might try writing in longhand even though you always use FinalDraft on a computer. It makes you feel eco-friendly.

4. Check e-mails and Facebook page.

...but so very crucial when you're trying not to write a screenplay. There's always the chance that there might be a message from Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan about your last screenplay and then you won't have to bother writing another one..


5. Read through the very few pages of the screenplay that you have already written

This will definitely make you despair and vow never to attempt a feature length screenplay ever again.

Now...*As advertised above

Totally free advice from screenplay expert Caroline Coxon about how to conquer these issues:

JUST STOP IT ...and start writing your screenplay


(It didn't work for me! Why should you be any different?)

Panic ain't better than pretending not to feel so.

Toba Beta, Indonesian author, said this. [I love the title of his (pending?) book of quotes - Master of Stupidity.]

Today, I'm NOT pretending not to feel so.

 Yes, panic. When I give myself time to think about it, there's slight panic rising inside about finishing my feature length screenplay by the end of August...That seems quite a long time away, you might think, but to me it's looming scarily and time appears to be moving faster forward than it should do.

Sometimes not writing is procrastination on my part, I know it is. At the moment, honestly, it's lack of time. I say that and then I think - lack of time? I could spend less time with the horses, I could spend less time writing this blog, I could spend less time reviewing other people's writing, I could spend less time sleeping...or eating...or remembering to breathe...

But June's been busy, July looks like it'll be even busier and as for August...

When I've finished a long day copy-writing - and there have been many such days lately, which is excellent for the bank balance - my mind is like a wrung-out dishcloth. Then I saw this image, posted by a great writing friend, Chris Messineo, creator of the very excellent MoviePoet.com website.

Yup, that's absolutely right.

Bother and damn!

Procrastination is, hands down, our favourite form of self-sabotage.

Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby (American manager and author) almost said this. Except she didn't put the u in favourite.


That's quite a name, Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby. Does it REALLY have all those Ys in it or is that just for effect?


If I wanted to sound important I might change my name to Carolyne A. Crucial-Coxon (the Third.) The A stands for Awfully, because I'm British.


Enough of that...confession time.

Oh, you didn't realise? 

Origin of PROCRASTINATE

Latin procrastinatus, past participle of procrastinare, from pro- forward + crastinus of tomorrow, from cras tomorrow. First Known Use: 1588

(I haven't been doing it THAT long.)

The thing about procrastinating is that it's meant to mean 'to put off something until later', isn't it? I find zillions of things that Must Be Done before I get on with my writing. What's it called if you put off something FOREVER?

Cowardice? Stupidity? I Googled those words to find an image and here it is:

Today, I'm going to remove the trash can from my head. I hope there's something under there.

Procrastination is opportunity's assassin

Victor Kiam...wasn't he the fellow that loved the shaver so much he bought the company?

Yes, he was. I always thought that wasn't such a great commercial - it made me feel something along the lines of 'Well, bully for YOU, Mr. Kiam, but some of us haven't got that much money at our disposal, you arrogant git.' However, I guess it was memorable so it served its purpose. (So memorable I thought it was Gillette and I now see it was Remington!)

His statement about procrastination is good though. I'm finding it quite tough to get going.

Thanks to:hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

 Before Christmas, working like a maniac (only more sanely)...a few days of nothing...and now I feel as though my head's full of glue. It's not so much a case of not getting on with my To Do List, it's more a case of not even knowing what to put on a To Do List.

So - here's a start...

Dedication involves making the space to let young ideas take hold

The unusually-named Zephyr Bloch-Jorgensen said this. Unusual job title, too. 'Australian guru.' What does that mean? He knows a lot about Australia?



Oh well...

Yesterday, I was dedicated. For ages I've be yearning to get on with some of my own writing, namely the novel, already started in my pre-own-voice days (shudder)

So...I finished up a lot of projects, tied up a bundle of loose ends and suddenly...there it was...space. Not The space as in Space, the Final Frontier but A Space where I was free to be creative without any work-related deadlines.

Space...wonderful, uplifting, full of possibility? No. Space...scary.

What did I do? I fiddled about a lot with urgent procrastination. I'll just answer that e-mail...I'll just check over that document...I'll just dust my desk...I'll just make a cup of tea...

But finally, FINALLY, I dared to look at the start of the novel - which is called Falling Awake - and it was...definitely me writing to please a putative audience, in fact... was it really me who wrote it at all or was it somebody wearing a cardigan with buttons done up tightly to the neck? Not a me I'd recognise, in any case.

Start from nothing. All there is, then, is nothing and infinite possibility.