Tag Archives: don’t panic!

When Should You Break Up with Your Story?

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Ann, Inspiration

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Note: Sometimes I want to say more than I can manage in one column a week, so you get a bonus double-feature! Also, I promise that we’re going to stop stringing out this analogy.

Last week I took my own advice and wrote a love letter to the story I’d been working on for the last few weeks. I tried it three times, and I had a painful realization–my heart and passion wasn’t there. Even my love letter felt like rote chore. I still find the concept intriguing, but somewhere along the way the excitement of the story has faded away or I lost it completely.

After a couple of days of denial, I decided to try writing a love letter for a story I haven’t worked on since November (mostly cast aside when the holiday madness swept through). In this letter, I felt the passion. I got excited. The grass was a beautiful and lush green on the other side of the fence, and I wanted to play in it.

I know, I know. Discipline! Sometimes, though, discipline isn’t discipline at all. It’s a chore-based motivation that we mistakenly flog ourselves about. I have a few novel-length works that I wrote simply as a chore. The passion was long gone–and it shows. I’ve learned not to do that anymore, but I’m not always fast to recognize it.

(I think that’s another post for another day.)

Sometimes we’re just procrastinating or scared. Sometimes the story just isn’t as relevant to us as it used to be when we originally conceived it. Sometimes we need to take a break, and that break might be a short one or a long one. This isn’t something quite as extreme as a genre change, just a story change.

I know I’ll come back to Ghosts. It’s been haunting me on and off for years. We’re just not in a place right now where we can give one another the attention we deserve, and those things that bring me back to the story every few months will resurface again.

Breaking up with your story is difficult decision (and a huge topic I’ll probably revisit a few times as this blog continues), but the biggest things to weigh in is your motivation for continuing or not continuing on a story. My love letter showed me the love isn’t there right now and I’m under no obligation to write the story, so I’m going to move on.

Seeing Someone Else

12 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Inspiration, Mike

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For more than a decade I thought I wanted to write an epic fantasy novel. I diligently outlined the story, started it, and subsequently restarted it numerous times. One day, though, I realized I hadn’t read a novel in that genre for years. I was no longer in love with the genre. I felt a little lost. The oldest memory I have of my mom reading to me was The Hobbit, when I was around four. Fantasy had always been a part of my life, and indeed I have written many thousands of published words within the genre (and edited countless more).

It might happen to you as well someday. Maybe not the same genre and maybe not after a lifetime of reveling in it, but one day you might realize–as you agonize over a story you’re struggling to even write a love letter for–that your tastes have changed. That you have moved on. That realization can be scary, but don’t panic.

This is an opportunity.

The first thing you should do is stop. Stop feeding your brain with the stories you no longer love. If you can find other kinds of stories to write about, or draw, or film, or otherwise create, then by all means continue to do that. But stop putting into your story brain things you don’t like.

The second thing you should do is start. Start looking at other kinds of stories. Don’t limit yourself to any one kind of genre, medium, or set of tropes. Explore what exists. And a lot exists.

When you’re exploring, remember to not just look outside the genre you no longer love but also the medium in which you create. Novels remain a dominant storytelling form, but movies, sequential art (comic books, webcomics, manga), modern computer roleplaying games, and even some television programs (not reality TV) offer compelling and well-crafted stories. Thanks to the Internet, other forms of storytelling keep cropping up as well (such as Youtube, Escape Pod and its kin, Echo Bazaar, and Homestuck). The Kindle might also bring a resurgence of short stories and novellas.

Ann and I will undoubtedly revisit this list in the future, but the important thing to note for today is that you have many, many options when you’re ready to feed your brain with new kinds of stories. (To say nothing of opportunities for telling stories!)

Of course, this advice is helpful even if you are still madly in love with the genres, media, and tropes you’re creating in. Storytelling isn’t a monogamous relationship; you should experiment around a little. You don’t have to dump your true love to learn something new, and the stories you tell in your chosen genre will be better for your exposure to other types. If you haven’t had enough analogies yet, think of it as cross-training for your story brain.

Today, epic fantasy and I are on friendly terms. Fantasy still informs my works; it continues to have an impact on the stories I tell. For now, though, I have a pretty good idea of what I love and the stories I want to tell, but I also know those might change in the next ten years–and if the change does happen I won’t panic, because I’ll know what to do.