So you want to build routine, you want to be more productive, perhaps you want to join us next week for our first weekly Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel every other Thursday evening starting March 5th 4pm PST/ 7pm EST?! But you might not have an active work in progress, or perhaps you’ve got that dastardly writer’s block, or you just don’t have the energy to pull stories out onto a page, even if, in theory, you’re available and want to be creative.

Great news! As I mentioned in last week’s post, there are plenty of aspects of the creative process that aren’t strictly words-on-page. In fact, some of the most important aspects of writing have nothing to do with hitting a word or page count goal.

So today, we’re talking about the 5 ways to write… even when you aren’t technically writing.

  1. Start/continue your writer’s wish list. This concept comes from a book that my friend read and then told me about; alas, I remember the friend, but not the book of origin. The concept is pretty simple: a writer’s wish list is a list of everything you want to write someday, in as much or little detail as you have, just to keep track of all those fragments until you’re ready to commit to piecing them together. Some items off my wish list, as an example: “food service superhero,” the line of dialog “I’m not old faithful!”, “Something in a car” (that one’s a script idea, specifically), and “couple rebuilding a house in a hurricane while breaking up.”
    1. There’s a version of this I learned in my UCLA Extension Romance Writing course called the “Id List” by Jennifer Lynn Barnes which also may resonate- the difference is that the Id List focuses more on tropes and scenarios within stories that may get repeated, for you to look through when you’re stuck or feeling uninspired by your scene to give you a shot of adrenaline. My Id list includes: “One syllable androgynous names for female characters,” “epistolary elements,” and “malicious compliance.”
  2. Interview your characters, either by filling out one of the million character building templates online (perhaps we’ll need to make our own soon…) or by literally demanding answers from them yourself. Seriously, I have been known to fill 10+ pages of a conversation between myself and a character or two who are giving me trouble. Since I got into scriptwriting, that’s been a faster way of switching voices on page, but I’ve often found it to be a cathartic way of unblocking myself and treating my characters like full people, rather than just convenient vehicles for theme and trauma. And because it’s a conversation, it doesn’t really FEEL like writing so much as it feels like transcribing.
  3. Do the boring admin stuff you’ve been avoiding. This can include, per the usual QueryManager fields:
    1. Writing a 1-2 sentence logline for your latest project
    2. Writing a 2 page synopsis
    3. Writing your query letter
    4. Writing a list of comps
    5. Writing your author bio
    6. Writing an artist statement for fellowships/contests
    7. Organizing all this stuff into a singular place for easy access/editing
  4. Do a tarot reading. My friend Christine introduced this idea to me; when she’s stuck or still figuring things out in the outlining phase, she’ll sometimes do a tarot reading for her characters. She knows the questions they have, because they’re her questions too, and often doing a tarot reading unlocks aspects of where to go next she wouldn’t have considered before.
    1. Our guide to getting unstuck can aid you on what the best questions to ask are
  5. Read a chapter of a craft book/read a craft article. I don’t know about you, but I’ve confessed to Kelly previously the completely irrational primal fear of Story Genius by Lisa Cron, a book Kelly recommended to me six years ago (if not more). Why? Because I’m not in school so it’s not precisely homework, and I can’t take time out of my day ordinarily to read as if it were work, but after work, when I’m reading, I want it to be fun reading. Like time-traveling Robin Hood smut, you know? So it’s become thing source of shame and guilt despite knowing it will be good for me to dedicate time to. Now if only I had a not-quite-work, not-quite-play series of accountability sessions where I could fit in at least half an hour of reading from this book on a regular basis…

The best writing process is one where you show up. Even if showing up doesn’t add to your total word count.

Great news- you don’t have to do it alone! Join the Rogue Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST starting March 5th. We’ll be building routine and community with YOU! Subscribe to get notified, and if you’re even a little bit interested, please fill out our quick survey so we can expand these in the future with you in mind!

“Read” this post as a YouTube video instead, if you’re so inclined!