my blog
get off your phone (A message to Myself)
Welcome to my blog. All I’m going to do on here is write about things that I hope might be helpful to other writers. Each post will be short. I’ve been writing a long time but I’m new to being published so it’s probably better if I discuss the different ways I approach things rather than discuss the publishing business as a whole.
As of wirting this I have finished my second novel which I hope to find a home with a publisher soon. This is a book that I loved writing. I say this because although I also loved writing my first book, A Million Tiny Missiles All At Once, it was much harder to write because it was very personal. In my second book, I just decided to write about kids that get into trouble and went from there. In this post I’m going to discuss how I went about writing it and why I loved it so much.
I am not saying that all of these techniques will work for everyone, for some reasion it worked for me.
1: I got a lined journal and I wrote the synopsis over and over and over again. This might sound like I was in The Shining or something but although I did not do this for my first novel, I decided to do it because for some reason I needed to know what steps I was going to take to write this story.
For example, I wrote Boys meet behind the Kwik Way (which was a store I used to meet my friends at when I was a kid) and under that I wrote They discuss how to spend the last few days of their summer. I then put Chapter Two under that and wrote another few lines as to what these kids got up to.
My terrible handwriting as I try to work out a scene in the novel.
Again, this might not work for everyone, but it worked for me and it helped me form a synopsis that I wrote and rewrote until I was happy with it. Did the synopsis change over time/ Definitely, but having this plan helped me a great deal.
2: I went for walks without my phone. I just left my phone at home and took my dog out and walked around the neighbourhood and thought about things. This might sound pretentious or something but again, it seemed to work for me. I found a book on the sidewalk one night in the pouring rain and this book gave me a huge idea. Not the plot of the book (I didn’t read it, it was ruined) but the cover. It’s hard to explain but having this weird little accident of finding this book in the rain gave me an idea for a character’s side story that eventually became a huge part of the novel and I’m pretty sure that if I was on my phone I wouldn’t have spotted the book at all.
3: I read a lot poetry. I know that sounds lofty and pretentious but I read a ton of poetry and I find it helps me think of ideas. I just feel it opens the brain up to writing in less hacky and cliche ways. I find it hard to explain. I read Bukowski, Rumi, WB Yeats, WH Auden just to name a few. I try to read dark poems, Out, Out by Robert Frost with the line the buzzsaw snarled and rattled in the yard is genius in my opinion and a huge inspiration. So at night before bed, I’d leave my phone in another room and read these poems and just jot down ideas in a little notebook and things just kind of came along after a while.
I hope these are useful, you might be already doing them, other people may have articulated it better than me. I’m someone who tries to write in short spurts, when and where I can. This is why I try to have a notebook handy. If I overhear something cool or interesting, I jot it down. I think the overall message is get off your phone, it’s destroying your brain. This is me talking to myself, really. Take it easy.
