Confessions of a Premise Writer

by Rob Hines

That’s me. I’m a Premise Writer.

It sounds like a real job, doesn't it? Premise Writer. It almost sounds like you could make money doing that.

Nope. Not even remotely.

Trust me. Being broke does NOT look this good.

Premise writing is what I've been doing since I decided to start writing fiction, and I've only recently come to grips with this label. It’s a sickness, kind of like rabies, I think. You can cure it, but it takes some gnarly treatment and you should probably avoid people for a month or so.

Are you a premise writer? Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you have a billion ideas written in piles of spiral notebooks and/or an incredibly cluttered note-taking app on your phone?
2. Have you written any more than about a page or two of any one idea?
3. Do you waste time at work organizing your ideas in fun Google Drive folders instead of actually turning them into thought-out stories?
4. When you do write a story, do you tend to jump right to the “million dollar idea” and linger there for a while before jumping right to the end?
5. Have you had a story about a problem gambler who acquires a golden touch rejected because an editor feels “it all comes too easily” meaning the premise happens with no real conflict or consequences?

Okay, that last one is pretty much exclusive to me, but if you feel any sympathy pains for the other four, you may be a Premise Writer too. Hope is not lost, though. You and I can break from a fate of being buried in an avalanche of hoarded notebooks full of neglected concepts. The key is (cue dramatic music) OUTLINING!

Yep, there they go. The artists are leaving now. The ones who want their writing to be an expression of their inner beings have given up on me.

Okay, the rest of you? You’re professional writers. You’re the ones who know you have to plan a project to achieve consistent results (read: get paid to write)

I’m not dissing anyone who doesn't plan their writing. Hell, until about a week or two ago, I WAS one of those people. At least, I was that way in my fiction writing. My revelation came when I realized that I’m more than just a fiction writer. I’m a corporate writer too. I write copy for advertising, corporate blog articles, web copy, and even a corporate comic book! And you wanna hear a secret? I plan each of those projects before I write them. Why? Because I like to eat horrible food and my paycheck allows me to continue buying said horrible food. If I'm that committed to horrible food, why shouldn't I be just as committed to fulfilling my writing dream?

My cubicle-mate at the above-referenced day job is also a writer and he has published two non-fiction books (if you’re a baseball fan, you can buy one of them here). He’s a relentless planner when he writes and I guess I thought there were different rules for non-fiction. There aren't. Well, except for the whole factual thing.

No matter what you write, the best way to make writing more efficient and less torturous is to effectively outline your plot and your characters. I’m not talking about the high school research paper method with Roman numerals and A’s and B’s and all that. All I’m suggesting is you know what’s going to happen from start to finish as well as the major events in between. It may be a bulleted list. It may be a detailed list of acts and scenes. It may even be a mind map that starts with a central theme and bursts in all different directions. The key is putting your whole story on the page before you try to write 100,000 words around it.

I’m not saying it’s for everyone. I know many great writers just sit and write. Good for them. I’m a Premise Writer. If I do that, I will do a fantastic job of writing down a plot with terribly boring characters and little to no exposition or resolution. In other words, I will suck.

So now I’m outlining. I’m giving myself a chance to hear the story from start to finish and understand my characters so I have a blueprint to guide my actual writing. I’m giving myself a chance to not suck.

Words to live (and write) by

Well, at least not suck as much.

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Passion, Puke, and Priorities

by Rob Hines

So… yeah.

I’m late with my article this month. Really late. Like “oh crap, is she pregnant?” late.

But I have a really good excuse.

Um.

Hold on, I know it’s around here somewhere.

Ah, screw it. I just flat-out didn't do it.

Sure, my kid was sick, but it’s 2013. EVERYBODY’S kid is sick. That doesn't work anymore. We had some major home projects to work on, but my wife is a high school teacher so she knows all about due dates, and she doesn't let me miss deadlines. I feel sorry for her students sometimes.

So what happened?

I happened.

This mess of a guy was trying to do a million things at once and decided the writing could wait. Ugh, it makes me nauseous just thinking about it. This passion, this hunger, this thing I want to do more than anything else was just pushed to the back burner for a few weeks while I did…other stuff.

And that’s okay. Yes, I feel sick when I think about the time wasted, but ultimately it’s just something that happened, and I have to recognize that even though it wasn't a very awesome choice, I can get back on track and leave my moment of weakness behind me.

When you’re pursuing a passion, you tend to make it an obsession that consumes your brain all day, every day. I think most of us are thinking about writing all the time, even when we’re not doing it. Especially when we’re not doing it. My mind actually shuts down a little when I’m finally sitting down to write. The words flow and I turn off my brain to avoid over-thinking the process. The mental torture doesn't start until I move on to something else and begin flagellating myself for neglecting the writing. So the answer is just write all the time, isn't it?

Nope. Not possible. I've got a boss that expects me to actually “do my job.” My son doesn't care about my passion. He just wants to play cars. And my wife would like to have her husband around once in a while. While I’m spinning all these plates, I’m secretly loathing myself for not being in front of a keyboard, and I do a lot of loathing.

Writing is a priority in my life, that’s not a question. The question is where it fits and when it fits. To truly bring writing back into the fold and make it stick, I have to make sure I establish an unbreakable commitment to the activity. I can’t have an excuse to let myself off the hook. I need a place where I can always write. I need a time when no one else can divide my attention. I know that place and time exist. I just have to find them.

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Habits are for nuns and other people

Hoo boy. I might not have the best advice regarding this topic. I guess that's okay, since Gayle already talked about her own difficulty with developing good habits. I don't have a pretty pink dress to spice up my post but all things considered, that's probably best for all concerned.

Moving on.

For starters, almost all of my habits are bad, and that doesn't just apply to writing. But since that's what we're here to talk about, as opposed to your judgment of me and my slovenly lifestyle and poor decision-making skills, I'll stick to that.

I don't have any writer habits and I think that's good. At least for me or somebody similarly wired. Believe me, I've read all the books that talk about establishing a comfortable environment and a consistent routine and I'm sure there's merit to that approach. For one, it instills discipline and there's certainly a benefit to that. I'm not discounting that advice. If it works for you, great. By all means, continue down that path and produce great works!

My problem is I think if I had to develop habits in order to write, I would be doomed to fail. See, my life is influenced to a great degree by an intricate network of part-time employment which prohibits me from making a lot of plans and committing to established routines. I work in the entertainment business and don't have one full-time job, I have several part-time and/or one-off gigs. I work on nights and weekends (some times), I answer my phone at all hours, I eat when I find food, I sleep when I can lay down and I write when I can get my hands on a keyboard or notebook. That sounds worse than it is; I'm comfortable with it and function just fine (although it does make maintaining personal relationships something of a challenge, but that's material for another web site). It just means that it's virtually impossible for me to say that I will sit down every day between 7:00 and 8:30 in the morning with a cup of hot coffee (Hello, Carrie!), no distractions and bang out X number of pages every day. I'm sure there are plenty of people in relatable situations. Maybe they have kids or some other factor that prohibits developing habits and following a routine. My point is, it would be very easy for people like us to throw up our hands and say, "oh well, I guess I just can't write today or almost any day ever", having a handy excuse to be defeated by circumstances we already know are beyond our control.

The alternative is to abandon the idea of developing habits in favor of doing the work. It means focusing on results instead of process. Worry more about getting it done rather than figuring how you're going to carve out the time and establish the environment necessary to sit down and get it done.

Now that I look at the words on the screen, I guess that actually qualifies as developing a habit.

Huh. Shows what I know.

By Clark Brooks

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Now there's a question...

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By Gayle Francis Moffet

How do you form a writing habit? That's the question we're trying to answer here on PPM this month. We're also trying to figure out how you keep a writing habit going and what tips or tricks might work best to help someone form a writing habit.

Folks, I gotta tell you the truth: I don't freaking know. I have spent the last three weeks trying to keep a list of my writing habits, and it goes something like this:

1. Get idea.
2. Write three paragraphs.
3. Completely forget about idea for a week while I crochet something.
4. Eat some cheese.
5. Two weeks later, write twenty pages of that thing.
6. Get distracted by comic books and movies.
7. Go get a drink with friends.
8. Eat some more cheese.
9. A month later, write ten pages.
10. Forget idea again.
11. Get new idea.
12. Write story while waiting for clothes to come out of the washer.
13. Edit story while clothes are in the dryer.
14. Get story published.
15. Wonder how the hell that happened.
16. Discover uneaten cheese in the back of the fridge. 

And it's lather, rinse, repeat unto infinity.

I've tried to take on all those habits that you get told time and again will make you a more reliable writer. I have tried to write every day, but there are days I open every document in my folder, and nothing feels worth working on. Not because it's bad, but because I'm just not there mentally for it.

I've tried to write in small bits of time I can find, and that one's proved to be pretty useful. I still don't write every day, but I'm in the habit now of writing during my short breaks at work, so I'm seeing output.

But here's the thing: Even with an uneven schedule, I don't feel like I'm missing the chance to do something more with my writing. I'm doing exactly what I want with my writing, and while I occasionally get frustrated at my lack of output, what I do put out is work I'm proud of and pleased to have my name on. And it's that pleasure that pushes me to write more. I like what I write, and liking it makes me want to write more of it, but sometimes that more comes in a single push over a week, and sometimes it comes in a series of short bursts over months. Every attempt to regulate it has led me to hate the whole process until I just let my brain do what it does on the schedule it prefers.

I'm sure the rest of the crew is going to turn out some great advice this month, but all I can say is, if you're not feeling it, don't feel bad about doing something else. That cheese isn't going to eat itself, and this dress sure as hell didn't come out of the ether:

Though I hope it gives someone

the vapors.

Enjoy yourself, find your own rhythm, and you're likely to be way more productive than you ever thought possible. 

Gayle Francis Moffet writes, but she doesn't do it on a schedule that looks like it's built from good habits. She keeps a writing tumblr at whatthehellamiwriting.tumblr.com, and that's about the shape of it this month.