HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH RESEARCH?

By Rex Hurst

Currently I am finishing up a book, called Sunday Morning at the Peak of Hell, the setting of which is the great beyond, the bad place where the souls of all the people we don’t like go. It’s a modern day odyssey through the afterlife, similar to the one Dante took in the 11th century, only updated for modern times.

So far it’s taken me five years to complete. Not because of the plot, there isn’t much of one, it’s because every time I had a new historical figure, I feel the need to stop all work and research the hell of that sad soul.

Granted a lot of these characters aren’t exactly well known in the public domain: Decius Mus, Upnastium, Alistair Crowley, Anton lay Vey, Tomas de Torquemada, Hetty Green, Ambrose Bierce, Wilhelm Reich, and John Romulus Brinkley. Recognize any of those names and you get a gold star. However, when I added each of these characters, often knowing very little myself about their lives, I felt the need to stop everything, buy every book I could on them (often this didn’t amount to much more than two books, in two of the cases there weren’t any and I was forced to use Wikipedia alone), and absorb the whole of their lives.

Which is why the whole of the book has taken five years to complete.

You’re probably going to laugh when I say that all of these months of research often only resulted in a few extra paragraphs (maybe half a page at most) of text. But I was also trying to absorb the flavor of the historical figure’s personality, so that their dialogue in Hell would seem accurate to the two readers who would read my novel and also know who John Romulus Brinkley or Hetty Green were. For some reason, it needed to feel right to me.

Now later on, as I’m polishing this work up to actually send to publishers, I’m wondering if I just spent too much time, literally years, on making these obscure characters as real as possible. Maybe I’m too much of a perfectionist. Maybe I’ve got OCD. Maybe I’ve been wasting my time and no one will give a damn.

As a final taste test, I gave the latest draft to my wife. She read over the manuscript and shrugged.

“It’s pretty good,” she said.

“What did you think of the depiction of Ambrose Bierce?”

“Oh, is that a real person?”

Ah well….

REALITY CHECK

By Rex Hurst

A lot of times when we’re all starting out as writers - no matter what age we throw our hat in the arena - we often stumble about trying to find our place in the vast and crowded literary marketplace. Everyone wants to be the next Harper Lee (except I don’t think Harper Lee wanted to be Harper Lee) and produce the great literary novel that fills the minds of generations with soulful insights. But that’s probably not going to happen.

In fact, let me assure you that the email inboxes of various “legitimate” agents and “serious” publishers are full of proposed great American novels. Maybe five percent will make it to market. I myself fell into this trap, sending serious story after story to these various despots, these self-proclaimed last bastions of literary merit in the West, only to be rejected and spit on at every turn. In reality these places are filled with nepotism and incestuous relationships, so if you’re not in the club, you’re not even considered.

As such I found myself adrift, constantly questioning whether I had talent or not, that's when I wrote my first horror story - or rather novel. It was supposed to be a short story but took on a life of its own. Well I put that together and it was snapped up by the first publisher I sent it to. With that encouragement I wrote up my next one. It too was immediately accepted by the publisher I sent it to.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that I had found my niche. Out of desperation, out of anger, out of sheer exasperation I found it. My point is if you are stuck in a rut, can't get anything published, try writing in a different genre. It could be that you haven’t found your niche. Romance, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, crime, and so on. Try your hand at a bunch. See if you can’t get a nibble from a different type of story.

ESCAPIST LITERATURE SHOULD BE MOSTLY ESCAPISM

By Rex Hurst

Now while this statement seems almost self-evident, it’s practically a tautology, I’ve noticed a current trend in the traditional genres of escapism (Fantasy, Superhero, & Science Fiction) have become more and more preachy, as if they’re using the medium to talk down and “educate” the idiot masses. Sometimes it’s a smug little quip about some “social justice” issue. More and more it’s been almost feature length “messages” horned into previously popular franchises.

For me the breaking point was a recent episode of Dr. Who. The new Doctor, in a female incarnation, meets Rosa Parks- not so bad in itself – but most of the episode, 55 minutes in length, was spent of lecturing the clueless companions (and through them, us the idiot audience) all about the Civil Rights era – a lot of which was incorrect or way too condensed. The actual “story” took up about fifteen minutes of time and revolved around some racist from the future coming back in time to knock Rosa Parks off before she could sit at the front of the bus. Not an alien who happened to be around at that time, maybe trying to get home, maybe dealing with similar issues on their own planet. No it was some cookie-cutter red-faced racist who wanted to destroy Rosa Parks. Why? Because he’s evil, that’s why. What more do you need to know, you racist! The entire endeavor was as subtle as a sledgehammer.

The purpose of these escapist genres was to allow the reader to cast their minds away from the nonsense of the world. For the reader to believe that the biggest evil in the world could be cured by throwing a magic ring into a volcano, that there was no problem too big for Superman to handle, that only a spaceship ride away was a world of adventure and beautiful green-skinned women. The escape from reality is why all of these genres became popular in the first place. People want to leave the world and have fun.

That isn’t to say, you cannot talk about social issues in your story. Take a look at any issue of the X-Men from the 1980s (the Claremont era for those in the know) and you will see a message of tolerance for those who are different from you. Somehow this straight, white, male author managed to place this message without disrupting the story or being preachy.

How did he do this? By putting the escapism and story first. If you are working in the fantasy, science fiction, horror, or superhero genre and the purpose of your tale is to push forward an ideological message, then you have a clunker on your hands. Stick to being outraged on Twitter. In escapist genres, the world, the oddity, the break from reality, has to come first. People don’t want a lecture, they want to see something beyond the norm. If you can’t deliver then, more onto a different type of writing.

TRY SCIENCE BABBLE IN YOUR SCIENCE FICTION

By Rex Hurst

For the three of you who know who I am, then you also know that one of the two genres I write in is science fiction. Aliens, lasers, beehive hairdo’d women saying “Show me more of this Earth thing called kissing.” This is my playground. The problem? Well, I don’t actually know much about science and what I do know all tells me that the stuff I write about in “the future” is completely impossible, or unlikely, or ridiculous. One of those.

Of course, this might not be the impediment that it appears on the surface. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, science fiction is easier to write if you don’t  know any science. Then you aren’t limited by all sorts of nasty facts and figures, and are only hampered by a lack of imagination. Most writers aren’t big on hard science, and despite what some might claim, most science fiction readers just want to explore the fantastic without a trip back to their high school science class.

But if you want the illusion of hard science, there is a way to fake it. As science today is expanding at an incredible rate, imagine how much it will continue to do so in two to three hundred years from today. Therefore, it would be perfectly believable for new scientific terms, devices, and jargon to come into being. This is something I observed in old school episodes of Dr. Who. I’m talking about the good ones from the 1970s starring Tom Baker. In these they simply invented techo-babble to cover the fact that most of what they were doing (time travel not the least part) was preposterous. The entire series was rife with such talk and I drank it all in. If it's presented in a straightforward manner, people will instantly believe.

Science today tells us that most people’s organs would be liquified if they tried to accelerate out into the planetary orbit. Well good thing they invented the Corvala Anti-Gravity Pump or the Gravtic Analysier or the Spacio-Cotray Junction, all of which allows people to zip away into space. Try it out. Make up your own. If you get stuck, take a current product and make an anagram of that. You will surprise yourself with what you can come up with.

Using Actual Events in Writing.

By Rex Hurst

In my current writing project I am using a lot of history. Not ancient history, at least not to me, but a decade not that long ago, where the younger generation would have only the dimmest of memories- if any memories at all. The 1980s. The book is called Satanic Panic and deals with the hysteria epidemic dealing with Satanism and Satanic Ritual Abuse cases, which popped up all over the decade- from hypnotically recovering repressed memories, to “satanic” heavy metal music, to people receiving jail terms for “satanic” activities in day care centers.

In my investigation, I have come across actual murder cases and other forms of abuse that have been linked to a various “occult” activities such as a very real cult in Matamoros who indulged in cocaine trafficking. Now with this dynamite material, I am face with the quandary, how closely to the facts of these cases do I adhere to in the text?

While many of participants are dead- the drug ring in Mexico ended with a police shootout and a building catching on fire- there are many who still are alive and have been negatively affected by these events. One of the cases involving a murder of teenage girl took place in my hometown and I know members of her family. How much should I use?

Changing the names is the easiest part. The easiest way to avoid litigation, at least. But often enough, the events of the story are so close to reality that one cannot help but make connections. Thus how much do you want to change it? The second easiest method to distance text is to change location. 

While a move from one large city to another might, say, New York to San Francisco, might not make that big of a difference. If you change the local from the urban to a rural one (or vice versa) you might get surprisingly good results.

One odd thing I’ve run across is that often people will think events from real life sound “too fake”. That coincidence which actually occurred where too far out to actually happened. That dumb decisions a person made was far too stupid for a real person to make (Never underestimate the ability of people to make idiotic decisions under pressure). One thing that springs to mind is The Contest episode from Seinfeld, where the gang bets on how long they can go without committing the sin of onanism. While sounding completely ridiculous, it is apparently based on an actual contest that co-creator Larry David participated in.

This leads to my final though on the subject. Don’t let the actual facts prevent you from telling a good story. If everyone is telling you that a plot point sounds ridiculous, change it. Even if it actually happened. Don’t let reality keep you from writing a great tale.

Getting Ideas for the Story

By Rex Hurst

Joseph Conrad as a seventeen-year-old sailor once heard the story of a man who had stolen, single-handedly, "a whole lighter-full of silver.” This story bounced around in his head for twenty-five years before emerging as one of his greatest novels, Nostromo. It is about a man who, while involved in a fictional South American revolution, stashes away a shipment of silver, only to be unable to reach it again.

One little story blossoms into a novel that has never gone out of print.

That’s why when I’m preparing to start on a new book, I never read fiction. For months I delve into non-fiction, watch documentaries, listen to old people. Then little by little the full story emerges. An idea here, some dialog there, a new character, bits of flesh and bone- all of it comes together.

If I don’t do this, what sparks my ideas? Other people’s work. And then I’m not producing my own, but copying another’s style.

Decades ago, when I was first starting to write seriously, I listened to a lecture by an author who told us, “If you’re going to go into writing, don’t be an English major, because then all you’ll have to write about is other people’s work. Do something that will give you ideas or things that other people will actually want to read about.”

That always stuck with me. And when I delve into the non-fiction world of material, I am always asking myself, “Can this be a good story? Have I heard it before? And if so, is it a story that has been played out? Done too many times?”

It’s incredible how a minor germ of an idea from an obscure place, can spark an entire novel.

My last book, The Foot Doctor Letters, came into being because I was reading about the life of Carl Panzram and I realized that most fictionalized books and films of serial killers never got them right. Thus, I set out to create a fictional serial killer that could have been authentic. Maybe I was too successful because a lot of people seemed turned off by it, but c’est la vie. What I had initially intended to be a two-page short story blossomed into a 267-page novel.

You never know where these ideas will take you. There is a wealth of ideas and new stories just waiting to be unearthed.

Go forth and find them.

First-Book Jitters

By Rex Hurst

As I’m sitting writing this blog entry, my first novel is being uploaded onto Amazon. Now this isn’t the first book I’ve sold, that one being a particularly foul epistle on a serial killer from the murderer’s point of view, but as the publisher has been reluctant to return my emails, I’m counting this as my first. And of course I’m thinking what next?

All of my energy and focus and drive went into creating a modern masterpiece of aliens shooting each other, I gave no thought (or very, very little thought to be accurate) as to what the hell I do next. As the late, great John Mortimer once wrote to me, (I’m paraphrasing here) “writing the book is the easy part, then you have to get people to want it.”

How do you do that?

Well, writing a great description for the back of the book is a good start. I have now written and rewritten it half a dozen times. How to make it interesting, but not generic. Unique, yet also fit into the category the reader is searching for.

“Time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions,” as T.S. Elliot put it.

“A forced-grown Gen-Human, only three months from his decanting bottle, is shanghaied by a sadistic pirate clan.”

How’s that for an opening line? Does it grab you?

And does the blurb matter? I’ve got a kick ass cover, put together by some very hungry Venezuelans. The cover, despite what anyone says, sells the book more than the blurb.  Am I wasting my time?

Then the practical bits. How do I advertise? Or, more importantly, where do I advertise? I’ve got cash for it, but I need to make sure that it doesn’t go down the tubes. Then there’s the process of buying the ISBN number, the bar code, registering the copyright claim, having a print run of the books, getting an author’s website up, going to conventions, having a banner made for myself, getting magnets and t-shirts and miscellaneous crapola all put together.

(I met an indie comic books artist recently who makes more on the fridge magnets and stickers of his comic than he does off of the book itself).

Still that’s neither here nor there.

All of these tensions, all of these potential problems, aren’t going to stop me from hitting that fateful button “publish.”

And here we go.  

The Secret to Selling a Book? Meet People.

By Rex Hurst

Having now sold two books and a number of short stories, I can honestly tell you that having the perfectly crafted cover letters and hunting for an agent to pass your work onto the “big publisher” is no strategic match for actually meeting people in the flesh, having a few drinks, and making a couple of jokes.

Networking! Networking! It’s all down to that.

Everything I sold is because I knew someone. Another author gave me a tip. A guy I knew became an editor. Another author gave me a recommendation. Like the mafia, you have to be vouched for before they let you in. If they can put a face to that name, get a sense that you’re a human, they’ll unconsciously associate your work with those good vibrations. It’s natural. 

It’s human.

The old cliché once again rings true, “it’s not what you know blah blah blah.”

At this point some may be thinking, “It shouldn’t be like this. I just want to write.”

With ten thousand other people in the same room, all screaming to get their work published, this is how you stand out. Go to the conventions, to the meetings, to the writer’s groups. Schmooze.

I’m not saying suck up, you’ll come across as desperate.

Ask advice of those writers attending the event. People love to expound and be the sage. And if you’re still having trouble, brush up your skills with a reread of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. It might seem phony, but it works. 

Choose Your Own Adventure

By Rex Hurst 

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. —Opening lines of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City (1984).

The second person perspective, why is this not used more in writing? For those who have forgotten, or didn’t even know it existed, the second person perspective is when the protagonist of a story is defined by the use of the second-person personal pronoun, ie “you.”

While fiction is dominated by the first and third person perspectives, there are many respectable examples of this narrative type being used successfully.

The first example comes from my youth when I devoured every young adult book that I could grab. One of my particular obsessions was the Choose Your Own Adventure series where you are the main character and have to make a series of choices that affect the story.

“If you want to kill the dragon, turn to page 56. If you want to run away like a pathetic coward, turn to page 119.”

I ate these up, even though most of the endings resulted in you dying horribly. The use of second person really helped to immerse my adolescent brain in the story.

A few other notable examples are A Man Asleep by Georges Perec which follows a 25-year-old student who one day decides to be indifferent about the world. Ezekiel is a critically acclaimed short story by Segun Afolabi and The Sweetheart by Angelina Mirabella is a novel about a woman wrestler.

Many critics find the use of second person distracting and indicative of poor writing. It is true that use of this style does not allow any assumptions as to how the narrator felt or why he or she acted. It leaves no room for ambiguity on behalf of the narrator. If the main character is you, then you know exactly how you felt and the reasons for your action.

Using second person may be an opportunity to expand beyond the limitations of the standard narrative, to try new stories based on the absolute authority of second person.

Here is a challenge. Take one of your old stories and convert it to second person. You will obviously have to change some of the material to fit the style properly. Then reflect on the outcome.

How has it changed the theme of the story? Is it warped? Or is it improved? You might be surprised at the results. 

The Underused Foil

By Rex Hurst

In classic drama the term foil refers to a character which is created for the sole purpose of accenting a quality in a major character.

For example in Sophocles’ ancient drama Antigone, the titular character is supposed to be a strong willed individual, so to make sure that the audience understood this properly the character of her sister Ismene was written as a weak and meek person.

In later stories this function was often fulfilled by the hero’s sidekick. Tonto, Jimmy Olsen, Man Friday, Sancho Panza, Dr. Watson, Samwise Gamgee, etc. All of them were good, but not quite as good as the hero.

In my opinion, this is an underused tactic in books and films nowadays, where so many of the characters seem to be monotone. The strength of the protagonist is supposed to be what sets the hero apart, but if everyone acts just like him, how then does the character stand out?

And the foil does not simply have to limited to the protagonist.

It can be equally applied to the antagonist. In my current work, I have a villain who is working on a grand and sweeping master plan, something outrageous and beyond the ordinary. The character is a cut above the average crook, but I felt that I had to illustrate this a little better.

I created two foils, a pair of criminals from the bottom of society. Drunken villains with no foresight and a smash-and-grab mentality, who are incapable of making a plan beyond their next stolen meal. Compared to these two, the antagonist is a super-genius and was my intention.

Another good example is the character of Otis, the dimwitted subordinate to Lex Luthor in the original Superman.

Not only does the foil accent qualities of your heroes and villains, but it adds depth to the story. It is an easy way to make sure that not all of the characters sound the same, or are at a similar emotional level. As such the foil is an underused tool, which needs to be dusted off.

Save the Cat

By Rex  Hurst

"Save the cat" is a term coined by the late Blake Snyder in manual of screenwriting of the same name. And while it was created for the purposes of screenwriting I feel that it works just as a well for a longer work of fiction.

The term is used to describe the scene where the audience (or reader) first meets the protagonist. The idea is that the character has to do something nice to make the hero like the character and begin to sympathize with them- that it is important to make the reader's first impression of the protagonist a positive one.

The term incidentally comes from the opening scene of Alien, where the hero Ridley saves a cat named Jones.

This technique also helps to insulate the character from backlash later on if that person makes a decision that is morally questionable, arrogant, or even downright evil. The initial impression is supposed to linger and the audience remembers that the protagonist is not all bad, because he saved the cat.

I recently did an experiment where I wrote two similar short pieces where the main character is attempting to escape from a sinking ship. In one I had him furiously attempting to escape as fast as he could. In the second the only difference was that I had him attempt to save the life of a person who was on the verge of death by carrying him, thus slowing him down.

Overwhelmingly people preferred the version where the hero saves the cat. I know this is just anecdotal evidence, but I'm convinced.

Saving the cat works!

Dealing With a Personal Apocalypse

By Rex Hurst

In December of 1922 Ernest Hemingway was in Switzerland covering the Lausanne Peace Conference for a Canadian Newspaper. While there he met with an editor who liked his material and requested to see more. Hemingway cabled his wife in Paris to come immediately and bring all of his stories. With admirable thoroughness his wife complied, scooping up all of his work, including the carbon copies, and went down to the station to hop a train. She settled into a berth then, before the train left, went to buy a bottle of water on the platform. When she returned the suitcase was gone.

It was never recovered. The whole of his literary work went up in smoke. How did the world look to Hemingway when he found out? This is a personal apocalypse which is nearly impossible to put into words. Can you imagine? Can you relate?

Yes I can.

At the end of June I was on vacation. The plan was to go down to Florida for a little family reunion with my mom, brother, and his five kids - a direct flight from Charlotte to Florida. I had packed two bags for the trip. A big one, which contained all of my clothes, and a smaller carry-on in which I stowed a couple of books, some candy, personal toiletries, and the handwritten draft of the book I was working on. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

I woke up late and had to rush up to Charlotte, skipping breakfast. It took about an hour and a half. I opted to leave my car in one of the long-term lots and ran to a kiosk to wait for the airport shuttle. As I’m waiting, my phone rings, so I put my bags down to answer. It’s my mother, making sure that I had arrived on time. As I’m talking to her the shuttle arrives and I get on taking only the large bag. It wasn’t until I was physically getting onto the plane that I realized the smaller one was missing.

The material lost was about 140 pages, around 6 chapters, totaling 4 months work. I called the airport lost and found, but nothing had been turned in. During the entire vacation I had stress dreams about the bag. Like Tantalus’s grapes, it floated in front of me and zipped away when I tried to grab it. Once I realized that all hope was gone, depression crashed over me and I probably became the worst houseguest my brother had ever had, not wanting to do anything or even leave the bedroom.

So what does a person do? 1. I had to put aside all work on the book for now, I can’t even look at it without becoming depressed. 2. Store up the feelings and squirrel it away for use in some other work. Everything can be material. You never know when it might come in handy- such as in writing this blog.

            

Read the Bad Stuff

By Rex Hurst

I try to hone my writing skills by reading a lot and observing how others writers put their words together. I do this quite regularly, to the point where I often have to reread a page because I spent so much time analyzing the structure that I didn’t pay attention to the actual meaning.

When one chooses literature, it is natural to gravitate to the great writers in history. Ones that we all hope to emulate and, perhaps, join the ranks of. We dip through Dickens’ characterization or untangle Faulkner’s impossibly long sentences, trying to fill our souls and pens with the joy of the best literature in the world.

But, in my opinion, it is just as important to read bad writers and bad literature, as it is to absorb the good stuff. The reason is simple: to see what not to do. It is good to have a reminder to not indulge in clichés, to see what an awkward sentence looks like, or to avoid using the same damn word over and over again (Word has a thesaurus function, probably one of the best new tools for aspiring writers).

Let me give you an example from a bad book, recently turned into a worse film, 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James. It is a book I eventually gave in and read after all of my students kept telling me it was “wonderful.” They and I obviously employ different definitions of the word.

“I line up the white ball and with a swift clean stroke, hit the center ball of the triangle square on with such force that a striped ball spins and plunges into the top right pocket. I’ve scattered the rest of the balls.”

Pardon me I think my eyes have melted. Here’s a fun little exercise, see if you can rewrite that passage in ten words or less and actually improve its clarity. It’s surprisingly easy.

Another example:

“And from a very tiny, underused part of my brain—probably located at the base of my medulla oblongata near where my subconscious dwells—comes the thought: He's here to see you."

A tiny part of my brain rejoices that I’ve learned not to overfill my sentences with extraneous adjectives. The other part has shut down with the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of people scarfed this book down and loved it.

Still the passage above, and many like it have served to remind me about what I do not want my writing to be like. I don’t regret reading 50 Shades of Grey because by analyzing its awfulness, it has perversely helped to make me a better writer.

My advice is to study these writings. The bad plots churned out for a paycheck. The twisted sentences and flat characters. Analyze these missteps of literature, these forgettable tomes, these purple prose troubadours, and remind yourself how not to follow in their footsteps.

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REX HURST

Rex Hurst is a writer and a university instructor orginally from Buffalo, NY. After 30 years of attempting to write stories, he feels his talent has finally hit the right pitch to attempt to sell it. He also is trying to discover if one can grow wheat in a pot sitting by the window.

Waiting for Inspiration

By Rex Hurst

I often talk to my students or other aspiring authors about producing material. They ask me what I’m working on and I ask them about their routine; about how they go about the physical act of writing. I am one of those people who thinks best with a pencil, thus I write out everything longhand first. Many people seem to regard this as slowing the process down immensely. I see it as another level in the revision process, one where I take all the undigested bits of ideas and start to put them into a coherent form. A lot just want to dive right in. Nothing wrong with that, each writer has their own way of creating material. As long as you produce, there is no bad way.

That being said there is one phrase that I hear over and over again which almost guarantees failure: “I wait until I’m inspired before I write.” As anyone who has written a novel knows, a person’s enthusiasm tends to wane the more you have to work on a story. It ebbs away bit by bit, until you hit that 10,000 word wall and everything you’ve put together seems terrible. You question every single character, every plot point, every noun and verb, your ability as a writer, your very place in the universe! This is the precise moment when the joy of writing slips away and it becomes work. But that’s a fact you have to deal with if you want to finish a story.

There was a lady I knew who relied entirely on inspiration to spur her into action. She’d come up with an idea, then she’d talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it some more, then, in a burst of passion, feverishly clack away on the keyboard. Gradually the passion would fade and her typing slowed down, eventually stopping altogether. She’d save it and print a single copy to store away until she gained the inspiration to continue.

I looked at that file once. There must have been at least 50 stories in there, some very promising, none finished. All of that work for nothing, because she didn’t want to put in the effort to stay with a story until its conclusion.

We all get inspired to write. An idea strikes us, bells ring in our heads, and the words flood out. It is an excellent way to begin. But waiting for inspiration to finish a piece is folly. Once the initial excitement is over, writing is work, an honest to God job. Anyone can write when they’re inspired. The professional writes when they aren’t.

So write! No matter what! Set a daily pace for yourself and stick with it. Even when your head is clogged with confusion. Even when the pen is being a beast. Even if every syllable is torture. Write! Write! Write! Force yourself. Because that’s the only way to get the job done.