Rachael Green Books

Just another WordPress site

This is a text widget.

September 2023
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

How do you choose ideas?

by

G’day, all.

Question: How do you choose ideas? And don’t whine – I NEVER have any good ideas. Or those I get dry up about three paragraphs into them.

That is, seriously, rubbish. If you cannot come up with one idea in half an hour, then you really aren’t trying.

Buy a journal that is only for ideas. This can be a simple exercise book or a you-beaut, cost-an-arm-and-a-leg one. Just get one. Then go through your days to come and see where you can steal that half-hour on all of them for as long as you like.

Now to make your life really difficult.

Take one half an hour. If you are honest, you can find this time. Maybe you will have to forgo that exciting TV program where the plane is fallen out of the sky and you just have to know who survives. Most of us have some gadget or other which can tape the episode, or there are channels which have these shows on repeat or have one big binge of replays over the weekend. Or if you MUST watch it in real time, use the ad-breaks to think/brainstorm.

It really doesn’t matter what you come up with. The idea is to come up with 10 ideas. 10? Yes, 10. But they’ll all be junk you scream. They may be at first glance. But give each of those 10 ideas thought for another half-an-hour after you have finished writing them down.

You don’t have to think about them as soon as you have written them. Use the half-hour you have(hopefully) blocked out the next day to do this. If you can see straight away that the idea is really rubbish, then you can move it to a folder and keep using that half-hour for further shaving down the ideas.

Once you have finished your half-hour with one story or another and are sure you have something going, choose the one you like best and begin to write it. If the story goes a little haywire, stop that one and transfer your attention to another of the remaining stories. When you come back to it, the roadblock may just have magically removed itself.

Doing this exercise should not only remove the barriers you are having on one story, but you should always be working on one of your ideas.

Do NOT limit yourself when you are thinking. If you need a different atmosphere then get it. Go for a walk if your phone allows you to make notes and write down what ideas pop up. Or text to your computer at home. There are a thousand ways to keep track of your ideas these days. You can always carry a tiny notebook and grab your half-hour anywhere you want. All of us have breaks at work now and it is easy to take a drink with you so you don’t have to go anywhere when you are there. Or take a stroll near some plants or trees or greenery. For some reason, doing this sort of stuff seems to always bring forth ideas. Too many authors have credited it for it to be false.

By grabbing that half-hour, you can not only come up with some great ideas. You should, after a bit of practice, be able to develop 2 or even 3 stories at a time. And because Kindle especially stories can be any length, you do not have to panic about your length. You may have 1 that you can quickly see will fit a short story of 5,000 words, another that can just make 500 words, and yet another which may go for 70,000 words.

If you are going into the territory of 70,000 words, and you are fairly sure you can finish it, then don’t take any of your other ideas out until you have finished at least 1 of the 3 you have hopefully begun. Keep working slowly at all of them, but aim to have 1 finished by the time you are comfortable with stealing that half-hour.

And, remember, it is not really stealing it. What it is doing is making you responsible for your own actions. Washing machines are so smart these days, all you really have to do is put in, add some liquid or powder, select a few buttons and take the clothes out of there when they have finished. How many hours do you take out just to watch some program which has its twin sister on another station? Are you really going to miss anything, apart from the chance to get your writing career up and running? After all, you can also buy the series and binge on it anytime you like.

So get that exercise book or proper journal, find your half an hour – it can be in 15 minutes parts- and really put your brain to work. Nothing is off-limits unless it is something you are not comfortable with and then it is simply relegated to the useless folder. NEVER simply throw something you have thought off out. I have said this before.

You can ALWAYS brainstorm what it is that upsets you and rework it.

I will expand on this post at another time.

Now go find your half-hour. 🙂

So what to do this year?

by

G’day.

I hope everyone had a safe and Happy Christmas and New Year. New year, new(?) goals. I’ve pretty much given up on one of mine – to lose the 10 pounds that has snuck on since I had a stroke. Oh, all right – more like 15. But it is almost impossible to shift I am finding,  since all my joints seemed to have decided to fuse since that time and the ones that do work do not work the same way. Stephen King talked about his way of walking changing since his accident – I can relate well.

But this is not about me. I am mobile now and I can work around all the problems – eventually. All this does is pander to my innate laziness. I LOVE having reasons not to do something that I know I should.

How about you?

One of the things I am intending to do this year is to find who my readers are. I know I cannot appeal to everyone. That has been a long time finding. But now to find the ones who do enjoy my writing. So how do I plan to do that? At this point in time I have no idea. But I do have some ideas on what I should do.

One of these is to decide who. I do not write steamy sexy books for example. My first(and only!) attempt at that made me laugh my head off – not exactly the plan for it. That book went into the darkest drawer I could find and is not going to ever see daylight again if I can help it.

I like writing for children and I like cosy mysteries, with a little bit of violence thrown in. After all, I know some little old ladies who are perfectly capable of putting someone in hospital with a whack or a walking stick. Kids can be a bit more tricky, but wizards and other-world things still seem to attract them in general.

Or perhaps it is just what is needed or appeals at the time. To both groups.

Have any of you finally found your readers? Great if you have. That is a terrific starting point. After all, you can direct your writing efforts towards them without worrying if they will like them. But never get complacent about it. Readers are precious and will leave you in droves if they think you are not giving your best every time, even the more forgiving ones. Unfortunately I have found this with some writers I love – the aforementioned Stephen King being one.  I lost interest in him for a long time when he started writing what seemed absolute cr*p to me. No doubt others loved it, but I just didn’t like the change. That didn’t mean to say I didn’t buy each of these weird books, if only to see whether he had come to his senses again!

One of my mentors has always told me to write what I like to read. Now, while I think that is  very good advice, if you don’t really think you can write that stuff, don’t be afraid to try something else. Like my experiment with erotic writing ( I don’t like reading that stuff by the way, but all the best to those who do!) it is worth at least trying something out of your comfort zone  out, just to push yourself.

There are so many categories on Amazon and other platforms now, you should be able to find something that appeals. So go search for one, and have fun trying to write what genre it is. Just don’t spend too much time if you think it is not a good fit for you.

Keep trying. It works!