Which kind of writer are you? --Part 2

Writing is not one activity, but a number of activities. We tend to only value the time we actually spend at the word processor, and since few of us get much time to spend there, we're constantly asking ourselves--and established professionals--"how do you find the time to write?"

Here's the secret of making time to write: writing is many different activities, and each activity demands a different kind of time.

You can write in the shower. You can write on the bus. You can write at the office, or in front of the TV. All you have to do is perform the appropriate kind of task in each of these time slots. If, when the weekend comes, you find four hours in which to do draft work, you could write half a chapter in that time, provided all the other preliminary work has been done in other time slots.  But you could also edit, or network with other writers, or--that much-maligned but essential, time-honoured classic--lie on the couch and stare at the wall.

The Dreamer

Let me introduce one of your writing selves--possibly the least appreciated but most important one:  the dreamer.  

We all daydream. Unfortunately, after having had our knuckles rapped for it in class, many of us feel guilty when we do it. Get over it! Daydreaming is one of your most important activities as a writer. Learn to be proud of those times when you sit slack-jawed, eyes slowly crossing. If anyone asks you what you’re doing, you can truthfully answer, “I’m working.”

Your daydreaming time can happen anywhere. The trick is to be aware that you’re doing it. Most of our daily fantasies go by half-consciously, and we forget them immediately. Learn to know that you’re doing it, and commit to paper or file the products of your daydreaming.  One way to do this is to keep an idea diary. If you work at a computer all day, leave a small text-editor file or mail message open, and when ideas come to you, jot them in this. Then save the file or mail the message to yourself at the end of the day. The important thing is to recognize when your daydreams spark interesting ideas. Then find some way of ensuring that you remember those ideas. Don’t try to schedule this creativity. Just be ready to catch the moment when it happens on its own.

The average SF writer walks around with a head full of half-finished (and often half-baked) ideas. Anything might generate a story idea--the news, a chance conversation, something you read. Such ideas take the form of little snippets, like “What if you could use nanotechnology to reshape someone's face at will, thus making them into a real-life doppelganger?” Or, “Maybe we could build giant balloon habitats in the upper atmosphere of Uranus.” We tend to have a teeming mass of such ideas floating around in our heads, most of which we're only half aware of.

I refer to such half-finished ideas as “sparks.” They aren't complete enough to become the basis of a story. If I'm interested in a particular area (say, nanotechnology), then I tend to accumulate sparks in that area. Sparks can be anything: ideas for gadgets, visions of alien places, bits of dialog that don't lead anywhere.

The writer with a lot of sparks and no story usually thinks of himself as “blocked”--feeling the urge to write, but having no subject to write about. The sense of frustration this engenders is extremely valuable; it sets the subconscious mind in motion to try to come up with a storyline.

Stories happen when these sparks come together in new combinations. Suddenly everything--character, setting, plot, and idea--just fits into place. It's a frustratingly random occurrence for most authors, but there's a lot you can do to encourage the process. We'll look at the what, where and when of these things in a future post.