Jump start your writing
Storytelling stuff worth sharing
Later today I am heading to Westgate River Ranch Resort & Rodeo. And wow is that some delicious alliteration!
It’s an honest-to-goodness Dude Ranch and Glampground.
I won’t be modeling any ten-gallon hats or climbing aboard any bucking broncos, but I will be working with some incredible fellow storycoaches and a couple dozen nervous, eager students who want to supercharge their storytelling.
I’ll share some highlights next week, and also—heads-up—I’ll test drive a new Substack feature, which is sharing video that I can capture on-the-go on the mobile app. Since there isn’t a new podcast dropping Monday, watch for a quick Jason-at-the-Dude-Ranch clip.
So maybe I’ll model a ten-gallon hat after all, just for all you lucky readers.
Storytelling tip o’ the week
My dad made sure when I went off to college that I had a good set of jumper cables in the trunk of my car.
I must’ve jumped my awesome black manual transmission Subara Legacy station wagon three or four times. Thank goodness for friendly drivers willing to share their battery.
I also jumped other people’s cars a good dozen times. Chalk it up to college students not being able to afford newer vehicles and the intense Midwest winters.
I realized while jumping that not everyone had cables in their trunk. I always wondered how they handled that level of anxiety!
A question I get asked all the time in my various writing classes is: how do you build a writing practice?
The answer: put your butt in the seat, and put jumper cables in your trunk.
See, while we may love writing and love telling stories, the hardest dang thing to do is START WRITING. Seems counterintuitive, yes? But it is a universal truth that we will find any number of ways to avoid doing the thing we claim to love to do. There’s always another task, another “last thing to do,” another notification dinging.
Resistance. Distraction. Call it whatever you want. But the only way to write a book or play or speech is one page, one paragraph, one line, one word at a time.
For all our talk of creativity and imagination, it all boils down to this: “The art of writing is applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” (Mary Heaton Vorse, as reported by Sinclair Lewis)
There’s no short cut.
But that’s problem one. Let’s assume you’ve made it to the seat.
Jump starting addresses problem two, which is… I’ve sat. My pencil is in hand, my computer cursor is blinking, but now what? How do I actually start writing?
Put cables in your trunk.
Basically, address the problem before it becomes a problem.
Jump Start One
My brilliant colleague Mark St. Germain does it this way. He makes sure he is always working on two projects simultaneously. So he works on Project A, but inevitably runs into a wall. Okey dokey. He just hops over to Project B and forges ahead, trusting that his creative subconscious will tackle that wall—go over? go around? dig under? blow it up?
By the time he runs into a wall for Project B, yep, wouldn’t you know, Project A is freed up and ready to rock. Mark simply switches tracks as necessary to keep his momentum moving forward.
Jump Start Two
Another jump start strategy is to end your writing session each day in the middle of something. Don’t try to “finish.” Don’t tie up that chapter in a pretty bow. When you hit time, STOP.
Stop in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of a thought, in the middle of a sentence.
Heck, stop in the middle of a WORD.
Because then, until you get back to your desk hours later, your creative subconscious will be dancing around like a little kid who has to pee.
It’ll feel like when a piece of music is approaching its final chord but then doesn’t… resolve.
So when you sit down the next day? Your battery jolts. You fall right back into your flow, because you’re picking up the trail you left for yourself.
Jump Start Three
There are writers who use word counts as their jump start. Stephen King famously writes 2000 words a day, every day. Some days he does that in a couple hours. Other days it takes him all day.
If your lifestyle is such you can’t afford entire days, that’s fine. Use a timer. Lots of writers swear by sprints or Pomodoros (#CommissionsEarned). I carve out my sacred writing time in the morning.
Jump Start Four
The jump start most effective for me, though, is deciding the night before what I want to write the next morning. This strategy addresses the hardest part for me: I sit down, I stare at the screen, I can’t decide what to write about, I allow myself to get distracted while I “think” about what to write, and boom—I’m down the checking-the-sports-scores-and-bank-accounts rabbit hole.
So as I’m finishing each evening, I go through my various projects—newsletter? book chapter? play scene? podcast script?—choose one for the next morning, open that file, and put it into FULL SCREEN MODE.
My computer goes to sleep. I go to sleep.
Not only is my creative subconscious already tackling the piece while I slumber, but as the sun rises and I come to my computer and turn on the screen, that piece is the first thing I see.
And since it’s already in full screen mode, I don’t see any emails or texts or calendar notifications. I only see my story. No distractions.
I don’t have to think. I don’t have to decide. I just…
JUMP.
The Page&Stage Podcast
A reminder to check out this week’s episode. It’s a creatively explosive tag-team!
In this episode of the Page&Stage Podcast, host Jason Cannon dives into the creative journeys of Diana de Avila, a digital artist who discovered her passion after a traumatic brain injury, and her collaborator Wilma Davidson, a communication consultant. The duo met at Sarasota Pen Women, a prestigious organization supporting female artists, writers, and composers. Together, they discuss their unique paths, the history of the Pen Women, and the upcoming Art and Found event. Listeners are invited to explore how creativity can emerge in unexpected ways and the power of artistic collaboration.
Thanks as always for reading, and have a great weekend!
Jason “Butt in the Seat” Cannon