Change Your Clock and Your Batteries by Vonnie Davis

In our part of the country, we move our clocks back an hour tonight. Sixty minutes of sleep gained for many of us. Safety experts use this time to remind us to also change our batteries in our smoke alarms. A great idea. Checking our batteries in other parts of our lives can be a good idea too--like in our writing lives.

What perfect timing for this reminder since November is NaNoWriMo and many of you are diligently producing word count daily. Not me. No, I'm still trying to work my way out of a writer's slump. I write a few hundred words and lose interest, so I hop over to another story and fiddle with it for a while. Yup, I'm in a funk...and the migraines aren't helping. So I thought I'd take some time to read books on craft, refresh my zeal for writing and maybe learn some things along the way. You see, I'm hoping to re-energize my writerly soul. So I'm sharing some facts I'm rediscovering.

I'm calling them Vonnie's Half-Dozen.

1. Think like a professional. Writing is an art. Publishing is a business. To present anything less than your best to an agent or editor is like shooting yourself in the foot. Editors are too busy to hold your hand and teach you. If you send them a manuscript that requires few edits on their end, your story looks more appealing to them than one with some technical or grammar issues. Learn your craft. Learn it so well it becomes second nature to you.

2. Begin writing and keep going until you're through the rough part. (Can I stop for a few minutes and sob here?) All beginnings are tough. The beginning of a novel...the beginning of a chapter...the beginning of each day's work are all tough. Accept that, grit your teeth and get past those beginnings.

3. Call writing what it is. WORK! Give your labor the dignity of a title. Tell yourself you have to work now, even if you can only carve out thirty minutes from the kids, the housework and the outside job to write. If you respect your craft with a title--work--it makes it easier for your family to eventually see it that way, too. Take this piece of advice from a person who has fifty years experience at finding excuses not to write. I started writing at the age of eleven, but there was homework, then dating, then marriage, babies, kids growing up, mom's taxi service, a full-time job, college...oh, the list was endless. Until I turned sixty-two and Calvin took me by the arm, led me into the little bedroom where my computer desk occupied a wall and pointed to the chair. "Sit. Write. Make magic happen."

4. Write for yourself, not the market. Write what you love to read. Because here's the thing, if you write what's in vogue now, by the time you edit it a couple times, have it beta-read, tweak it some more and send it off, more than likely the topic has faded in popularity or the market might simply be saturated with this particular trope. "Gee, I like your writing, but we just contracted a book about this very topic last week. We don't need another." Write what you like to read. Then your passion will shine through and make your story magical.

5. Don't ask whether you're good enough. I think this is the bane of most writers' existence. I know it is mine. I have a great deal of self-doubt. I'm beta-reading a book right now and am so pea-green with envy over her talent. I read it and am swept away. Why can't I write like this? Why aren't I this good? Why? But folks, self-doubt can be a crippler. It truly can. We have to stop comparing ourselves to other writers...and simply be ourselves. Write in our own voice with our own style of turning a phrase. And keep writing. The more we write, the better, the stronger, the more engaging we'll become. Write, dearhearts, write. Stop saying I want to write like her one day and start repeating a new mantra: I want to be the best writer I can be. Then work toward that goal.

6. Stop paralyzing your first draft by searching for the perfect word. In fact, give yourself permission to write a shitty first draft. (Let me pause again to take a deep breath because I don't do this at all and this might be part of my problem.) In books I'm reading, I'm seeing over and over your prime objective in writing a first draft should be to get the story down. As THE Nora says, "You can't edit a blank page." But my rebellious mind growls, "Sounds too much like a long outline to me. Then I'll have to go back and rewrite the entire darn thing. I won't be able to send my critique partners a chapter until the book is finished and edited." I know me. I won't do it.

But...but I can try to force my inner editor to take a hike while I write a chapter...okay, okay, a scene. I can start by striving for writing a crappy scene before I nudge my inner editor to take over. Lately she's been correcting every stinking sentence. She and I are at odds more often than not. Lawd, I hate a grumpy woman.

So these half-dozen truths are my goals to conquer. What are your goals? Do you have any writing tips to add to the list?