The 2013 Pledge to Start and Finish a Book

Happy New Year! I'll bet you have a great New Year's resolution that you plan to keep!

The last time I made a resolution was in 2000. I figured that it was a monumental year with the changing over to a new millennium, and that deserved a kick-ass resolution.

So I resolved to conquer a real fear. I sat and thought hard ... what was a real fear that I could tackle and have results to show for it?

I decided that one fear was horses.

I took horseback riding lessons for the first four months of 2000. For the first month, I was so frightened that my instructor literally held the horse's bit and led me around and around a pen, like I was 5 years old.

By the last month, I had progressed to trotting and even staying on the back of the horse when it reared its legs. I'll never be an expert, because truthfully, I never took to it like some people do. But I did cross that resolution off my list as a "mission accomplished."

I haven't made a resolution since then .... until this year, 2013.

I came to a difficult realization that I was spending much too much time on Twitter. It was time to rock the boat.

So I have resolved this:

Every time I feel the nudge to tweet or spend an inordinate amount of time perusing tweets, I will work on writing my book. I'm going to keep an open Word doc on my computer so that I can go straight to it and just write until the urge is gone. I haven't even started this book. But that's the point. I thought to myself, "I'll bet I spent so much time on Twitter in 2012, that I could have finished a book in the time that I was tweeting."

Will it sell?

At this point, I don't really care.

I just want to be able to say ... in my life, I was a newspaper reporter, I was an AP wire service reporter, I was a newspaper editor, I was a magazine freelance writer .... AND I WROTE A BOOK.

Just one book.

Let's see if I can get it done this year. It doesn't mean I'll shelve Twitter completely, but I do need to get my life back in balance.

My Evelyn Salt Inspiration

Don't ever think of the beginning of your story as the "lead." That's such a clinical, sanitary term for something that ought to be a boisterous shout or poetic whisper of an introduction to your prose.


I like to think of the opening paragraph as my "nugget" -- a gleaming jewel of information that catches sunlight and reflects a dazzling prism.


But how to unearth it?


I have a perfect example from yesterday.


Once every six weeks, I write about technological or engineering corporations or government agencies. Sometimes, these stories completely numb my mind, especially if I'm trying to cobble them together on a Saturday afternoon. (And especially if I'd rather be sitting at a pool than in my tomb of a living room on a hot summer day.)


This story was no different. It was about the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, otherwise known as the DTRA. To be frank with you, when I see acronyms in my notes -- even in the first sentence of my notes -- I get completely zombie-fied.


I was so deadened to the prospect of writing this story that I fell asleep sitting up. I'm not making this up.


After my short cat nap, I decided that rather than try to force the piece, I'd watch a movie. So I plucked up "SALT" on my Netflix account and gave it a whirl. If you've seen the movie, you know it's filled with espionage and big boom-booms and lots of high-speed scenes.


Voila!


There, on the screen, was a scene right out of my notes -- a description of the IT professionals doing their jobs for national security as they tried to track down Angelina Jolie, aka Evelyn Salt.


Suddenly ... I was inspired. I watched the movie to the end, and then I came up with this nugget:


"These are the people who stand between you and disaster: The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA/Fort Belvoir, VA). The DTRA’s mission sounds like the backdrop for an action-thriller film: It’s the Department of Defense’s official Combat Support Agency that counters weapons of mass destruction."



Sometimes, discovering the nugget in the story isn't as dreary as my task of yesterday. Your source may give you the gem of a quote, or during the reporting of the piece, you may have stumbled into a scene that stayed fixed in your mind. (I once covered an apartment house fire, and the firemen were shooting so much water into the structure that it gushed out of four windows. My "nugget" described the windows as "gaping like astonished mouths.")


Other times, as it was for me yesterday, you just need to give your brain the R&R it needs to give the Muse entree.


Don't actively seek the nugget. If you're stuck, do as I did and take a break. When your brain is ready for it, the nugget will jump out at you like a Jack-in-the-Box.


When it does, that's when you'll get your "Evelyn Salt Inspiration." Then grab onto that inspiration like you would Angelina Jolie on the top of an oil tanker ... and give the readers the ride they deserve.

Bread-and-Butter Writing vs. Bliss Writing

Writers often bemoan that they can't get paid to do the type of writing they love to do.

So I have a solution.

Do both.

I call this, "Bread-and-Butter Writing vs. Bliss Writing."

Here's how it works for me: I write for trade magazines. Those stories are my "Bread-and-Butter Writing." Sometimes, the topics I'm covering are less than interesting to the average bear. And that puts the onus on me to make them sparkle as much as possible.

How do I do it?

I do it with my "Bliss Writing."

Besides this blog, I have two others that focus on my Christian faith. In those, I do the research and writing that I love to do. I don't get paid for these blogs, mostly because I feel that if I'm sharing my faith or information about God, I shouldn't make people pay for that.

In addition, I'm working on a novel. Research for that will require travel to Turkey. While I'm researching the novel and studying the Turkish language, I'm also coming up with story lines and the way in which I want to spin my tale.

Now suppose I'm in the middle of a HORRIBLE Bread-and-Butter assignment. I mean, mind-numbing awful. You know the types of stories I'm talking about, right?

Even if I'm on a deadline, I will take a break from my suffering with my Bliss Writing. I'll head over to one of my blogs, or I'll dig up some more novel research. You may think that this takes away valuable time from the matter at hand. But it actually has an opposite effect.

When I focus on the writing I love to do, something happens creatively with me. Truthfully, I don't know if anyone has done a scientific study of this (and if they haven't, they should). But when I dive into the creative story ... suddenly the Bread-and-Butter story takes shape in my mind. Suddenly, I have my lead, my focus, my structure. Suddenly, the words just FLY.

Does it matter that I get paid for my Bliss Writing? I won't lie -- I would love to see my novel published and on book shelves in Barnes & Noble. But life is short! Why not dig into what I love while I also use that same skill to make my livelihood?

We'd all love to write the things we love to write AND get paid for them. But if you want a life where ... say ... you make enough money to travel to Turkey to interview people and research a novel in archaeological digs for a splendorous work of art ... then take the Bread-and-Butter assignments.

Be grateful for them.

And then let your Bliss Writing fuel your Muse. Because I guarantee you, that Muse WILL awaken. The Bread-and-Butter Writing will no longer seem a chore ... but actually, you might be surprised when it transforms into Bliss.