Now Write!

by Laurie Lamson

  It’s important to remember it’s not always about quantity; quality is what’s vital. Publishers love brand names though, and they like their authors to continually put out books on a regular basis. With this, perhaps quality might be diluted if an author doesn’t take the time to put 100 percent into a work-in-progress . . . only working here and there.

  Creating an original idea and then putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) takes lots of work and personal time. Putting out three books a year might seem a huge feat to new writers—especially if you have a family and a day job—but it can be done and it will make you a better writer. Writing every day (and reading) is crucial to mastering the craft. Writing and releasing one book every ten years isn’t realistic if your goals are to have some type of career and create a real brand. Here’s an exercise designed to help you write more every day.

  EXERCISE

  1. Find time to write and make a regular schedule of it.

  To be prolific, you must write every day and you must make the time to write. Just like someone makes time to hit the gym or a Pilates studio with a regular routine, you need to create a routine to write. Get up earlier in the day, use your lunch break, or tell your spouse you might have to DVR your favorite TV shows for later—until you’ve finished your writing goal for the day. Though I recommend longer, dedicated stretches of writing time to pour out your creative energy, thirty-minute bursts of writing throughout your day really adds up by bedtime.

  2. Find a place to write.

  If you have to write at the kitchen table, in an office, a cubicle, or in your car, do it. Finding your own space—without distraction—helps you get in your zone and helps channel your fictional vision into your work.

  3. Make word count a goal.

  I mentioned a writing routine with the analogy of the gym in step 1. Use this same approach with daily word count. It isn’t unusual for full-time writers to produce 2,000–4,000 words per day, but for part-timers, let’s start small. Make your word-count goal as important as paying a utility bill or a doctor’s appointment—make it so you’ll hit your daily word goal no matter what. Start writing 500 words per day. Bring your work-in-progress to your writing space (step 2), and add to it daily. This means progress, and your horror short story or novel will get finished.

  To be clear, this isn’t an exercise to make you a “book factory,” but it will help you write every day. Writing every day makes you better, and writing every day equals more great horror stories for everyone to read! Being prolific isn’t only helpful to your skills and bibliography, but it’s also required when you sign a book deal. Publishers give writers deadlines—and deadlines are where your daily word-count goal is of paramount importance. Modern authors who maintain successful and prolific careers all have deadlines. In the words of this great writing series, I order you to Now Write! Maybe you’ll get 4,000 books out the door by the next century.

  DANA FREDSTI

  Surviving Writer’s Burnout

  DANA FREDSTI’s recent release, Plague Town, is the first of a zombie series with Titan Books. As an actress, she appeared in various zombie/horror movies and worked on Sam Raimi’s ARMY OF DARKNESS as an armorer’s assistant, sword-fighting captain, and sword-fighting “deadite.”

  I envy my fellow authors who are either managing to make a living from their craft or have someone subsidizing them while they work at it. I don’t begrudge them . . . but I envy them. The reality is that most authors can’t support themselves on their writing income alone. Most of us have to work at other jobs as well. For instance, I have a day job as an office manager and executive assistant. Still, within the last seven years, I’ve had seven books and numerous short stories published, as well as co-edited an anthology. I spent the larger part of two months this year promoting Plague Town, which involved a truly staggering number of guest posts and interviews. The publicity was great, but the work involved was intense.

  I believe in treating writing as a job and “going to the office” each day. While promoting Plague Town, I nervously eyed the calendar—the deadline for the first draft of the sequel was creeping ever closer. I’d thought I could handle the promo, my day job, and work on the next book, but that would have required me to pretty much go without sleep. I need my sleep to be a functioning (and non-homicidal) member of society, so I had to choose how I spent my time. I can only imagine how my writer friends who are raising children manage to juggle their loads without going insane.

  If you wonder if there are times when I get tired, cranky, and sick of being in front of a computer, the answer would be a resounding (put in some earplugs) “YES!” There are days I bitterly resent the need to work all the time if I’m going to meet deadlines and pay my bills. I also hit periods of total burnout where my brain refuses to focus and I slam into a wall of (for lack of a better term) writer’s block.

  About now I hear the screams of people who say, “There’s no such thing as writer’s block!” I’m rolling my eyes here, people. It’s not like having writer’s block means there’s a cement wall erected between yourself and your ability to write. It’s not a permanent condition. If it makes it easier, Oh Ye Who Have Tantrums at the Words “Writer’s Block,” think of it as a literary constipation (yes, I strive to add class wherever I go). A temporary blockage for which there are available remedies to help restore your . . . er . . . flow. I offer my own tried, tested, and successful home remedies against writer’s burnout below:

  EXERCISE

  1. Change your environment. If you have a place you normally like to work but things just aren’t flowing for you, you might need to try a change of pace. A friend invited me on a writing date at a local coffee shop and, to my surprise, I managed a couple of pages in an hour’s time instead of yet another session of eking out maybe a paragraph or two. The people sitting and talking around us, instead of being a distraction, provided a buffering of white noise that enabled me to concentrate on my writing.

  2. Change your writing tools. Always use the same computer? Try sitting outside with a notepad and pen, or even a different laptop or word processor. I have a Neo AlphaSmart, a lightweight keyboard and screen with no programs other than basic word processing. The screen only shows a few lines of text, which makes it easier to just plow on ahead rather than get fixated on making everything PERFECT the first time around. You can upload what you’ve written onto your computer and obsess on perfection later.

  3. Change your routine. Always write at the same time? Sometimes that’s a good thing. It gets your brain used to switching into creative mode when that certain time of day rolls around. However, when you hit a rut, this can be a problem, especially if you’re wiped out from working a day job. I sometimes find myself getting preemptively exhausted as the scheduled writing time approaches and find myself increasingly resentful that I have to work two jobs all the time. So now I take my AlphaSmart on the subway during my morning commute and work on my novel instead of reading. Almost a thousand words in less than forty minutes. And all before coffee! My inner critic is still asleep and my brain’s firing just enough to enable me to type. It doesn’t work every morning, but often enough I have a chance to make up for an unproductive writing session the night before.

  4. Try adding background ambiance. If you’re writing in a particular genre, try putting on movies that inspire you or create a certain atmosphere that helps you get into the mood. For me, since I’m currently neck deep in spreading a zombie apocalypse in my new horror series, I have a stack of zombie movies I rotate in and out of the DVD player with the volume turned low. I’ve seen most of them . . . more times than is probably considered normal or healthy, but this enables me to ignore them just enough to get into my writing. And when I take a break, lo and behold, there are zombies on my TV screen to cheer me on. This does not work for everyone (and it doesn’t always work for me) because of the distraction factor, so if you find yourself getting sucked into the movie instead o
f into your novel or story, turn it off and find some music instead. I tend to gravitate towards certain film scores that set the right mood. For Plague Town it was the score to TWILIGHT (don’t judge me, people. The score is great and sans sparkles!) while for my paranormal romance/jaguar shifter novel, it was the score to CAT PEOPLE and anything with a Mesoamerican flavor.

  5. Research. This may seem a tad obvious, but I never realized how much weird and random information I would need while writing a zombie novel, nor how many interesting additions and inspirations for my book I’d find while looking up things like: what sort of tools a person could buy (or scavenge) from their local hardware store; what’s on the menu of Calico County (a restaurant in Amarillo about to get attacked by the ravenous undead in Plague Nation); or gods and goddesses of the ancient Olmecs. And don’t just rely on Google and the Internet. The climax for Fixation (my jaguar shifter novel) pretty much came to me whole when I went to see an Olmec artifact exhibit at the de Young Museum.

  6. If nothing else works, take a break. Even with deadlines, there are times your body and mind just need to step away and get some playtime. Pick your favorite activity, be it exercise, going to see a movie, or getting together with friends. Giving yourself permission to take that break can be just the thing to shake things loose in the old brainpan!

  PETER BRIGGS (edited by Laurie Lamson)

  How to Molotov Cocktail the Thorny Problem of Adaptions, Speculative and Otherwise (The Screenwriting Anarchist’s Way)

  PETER BRIGGS has been a professional writing monkey for longer than he cares to remember. He’s the credited co-writer of the movie HELLBOY, and has utterly failed to master the art of writing winning pleading letters to the Writers Guild of America arbitration boards on such features as FREDDY VS. JASON, JUDGE DREDD, and ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (his original draft was featured in a book called The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made).

  After a pleasant experience scribbling for Now Write! Screenwriting, I was not a little bemused to be approached for this further helping of hopefully useful advice on speculative genres, held now in your finely manicured mitts.

  A lexicon sidebar: the words adaption and adaptation mean the same thing in literary jargon, with the less-popular adaption first appearing a century later than adaptation, around 1704. I prefer adaption as I’m a contrarian Screenwriting Anarchist, I’m English (therefore a champion of the underdog), and also the reduced syllables roll suavely off the tongue while not sounding like one’s afflicted with a stutter. Grammarist.com notes snootily that, “Adaption occurs far less frequently, mostly in publications and websites with relatively low editorial standards.” Which, I would submit lends it perfect credence for the Hollywood community.

  As a Screenwriting Anarchist, it’s my duty to sway you from the path of level-headed theory offered by my fellow contributors, and have you throw caution to the wind by trying some utterly bonkers methodology instead. That being said, this article offers not only practical advice, but some personally learned caveats of the pitfalls involved.

  Most of what I’ve written can be termed speculative, as I’m generally hired by film studios for projects in the fantasy, horror, and sci-fi genres. While the bulk is work-for-hire, the rest is “on spec” writing (not to be confused with “speculative genre”—in my particular cutthroat niche of the Scribblers’ World, a “spec” is a slab of script you’ve slaved over without pay, and of your own volition in the hope someone’ll be stunned by your genius). Of that spec work, a portion might be original pieces of my own invention, although on many occasions I adapt existing pieces from different media.

  By and large, as a fledgling writer with no track record and little money at your disposal to “speculate” with, your adaption may originate from some existing out-of-copyright work. Be careful here. A savvy American reader would know that means “fifty years after the author’s death.” However, in Europe that’s extended out to seventy years, with copyright laws further changing from country to country. I speak from bitter experience:

  Just after the mid 1990s, I penned a faithful period adaption of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, first serialized in Pearson’s Magazine a century earlier. Indeed, in research I discovered several deleted serial chapters and an alternate, much more “Hollywood” ending, all of which went right back into the story. (Research pays off!)

  Wells died in August 1946, which meant that under the fifty-year rule, his oeuvre had just fallen out of copyright as I was finishing my adaption. My agent took my freshly printed script to Paramount Pictures, where it came to the attention of Kenneth Branagh. Enthusiasm became, as they say, high. Just as we were all about to pitch into paperwork for a new WAR OF THE WORLDS movie, disaster struck.

  The European copyright law changed from fifty to seventy years . . . and not only was the book no longer public domain in Europe, but a music producer re-upped his own option on the rights before we were even able to speak with Wells’s estate. Which meant that even if we were to make a theatrical movie, we could do nothing with that movie once it left the cinema (DVD, TV, etc.) because Mr. Music had us over a barrel. We had to sit down with his lawyers and try to negotiate a deal for his rights. But he was having none of it.

  The story didn’t end there. A few years later I received a call from the head of development of Tom Cruise’s company. I went in for what I thought was a standard meet-and-greet, only to discover Mr. Cruise was very interested in making the very same WAR OF THE WORLDS script. Unfortunately I had to burst their bubble and tell them of our earlier attempt. Not to be thwarted, the agents all went back to the negotiating table with Mr. Music, and once more tried to broker a deal. Even with the irresistible box-office lure of Mr. Cruise, Mr. Music was unswayed. The project fizzled a second time. Ironically, a few years later, Tom teamed up with Steven Spielberg, who wanted a more contemporary take on the story. I have no idea what hoops they jumped through to secure the rights on that third go-around, but their movie, WAR OF THE WORLDS, was made and hit theaters in 2005. I guess you just don’t say “no” to Steven Spielberg . . .

  Of course, that was just bad luck with a public domain property. You wouldn’t attempt something like that from copyrighted material held by a studio, would you? Of course not. You’d be nuts. Um. Well-l-l-l-l-l . . .

  Even earlier, at the first twinkle of my career, I’d lucked my way into developing science fiction material for Paramount Pictures in their British office. The lack of momentum for the material I was digging up, mostly existing sci-fi novels and comic books, was driving me a tad crazy. One rainy day, I stood in a comic store in North London and noticed the first issue of Dark Horse Comics’ Alien vs. Predator series had hit the stands. I bought it, and over a pint of Guinness in the World’s End pub across the road, a crazy notion struck me.

  The separate ALIEN and PREDATOR franchises were both owned by 20th Century Fox. Not only was I not going to sell a script to Fox based on somebody else’s notion, but for legal reasons the studio likely wouldn’t even be allowed to read it. But that Alien vs. Predator comic premise by Randy Stradley was such a smack between the eyes, and I knew a script based on it might be such a wham-bang reading experience regardless, I calculated it stood a good chance of getting read elsewhere; perhaps by curious development fellows at Universal or Disney. I’d heard stories of spec scripts that were such strong reads that even if those scripts were never made, their authors were given plum movie writing assignments.

  So, I sat down to tackle my adaption. In truth, it retained few elements from Stradley’s comic books (although I went out of my way later to acknowledge his own terrific work).

  Anyhoo. After six to eight weeks of friends discouraging me and actively mocking me at dinner parties, I took the finished Alien vs. Predator script to my unsuspecting agent’s office in London. He stared at the cover, actually put his face in his hands, then queried gently, “Pete, have you any idea how hard this is going to be to sell?!” I attempte
d an innocent shrug.

  Luckily, the stars shifted in my favor. Unbeknownst to me, Larry Gordon, one of the producers of the PREDATOR franchise, and a former president of 20th Century Fox, was an old pal of my agent. Two days later, he called and asked if I was sitting down.

  Always on the lookout for material, and off the back of an underwhelming response to PREDATOR 2 and their current troubled production of ALIEN 3, Fox had literally, just days before, asked Larry Gordon to come up with an idea for a monster team-up of Alien and Predator. My script landed in Larry’s lap at exactly the right time. He read it. He loved it. He bought it. It was a million-to-one shot, but it paid off.

  Just to balance karma though, the project struck pay dirt at the very same moment studio head Joe Roth was leaving, plunging it into a developmental black hole. But it started my career, gave me a whopper paycheck, and became something of a cause-célèbre in screenwriting magazines and books. Which just proves that sometimes the path of the Screenwriting Anarchist is a true one.

  So, what if you find a novel, or perhaps even an existing film you’re burning to take a remake crack at, but want to adopt a more sensible approach and see about legitimately securing the rights? If you’re the trust fund heir of a major corporation, you can do what others have done and buy your way into the business, no problemo. Like most of us, however, you’re probably pulling a day job to support your writing and don’t have disposable income, so you need a more achievable approach. Again . . . watch out for those pitfalls.

  Unless you’ve made a personal financial investment in your project, as a writer it’s all too easy to get screwed by those who are only too eager to take you to the cleaners. Always get your paperwork in place: Secure the rights to the underlying material as a safety net for yourself if you can, right from the outset. You may be surprised; you may not even have to spend a lot. Some authors are keen to have their work taken out to the studios, particularly if they’ve languished unloved for a long time, or if you can gain the interest of a reputable partner producer to help champion the project, and your agent or legal adviser does their part.