Gary Hurtubise

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Music to Inspire your Writing

October 16, 2018 / / 0 Comments

So, small confession: I don’t believe in the muse.

I do, however, believe in the music.

            I wouldn’t classify myself as one of those writers who sits in front of a keyboard, waiting for an ethereal, phantasmic, inspirational visitor.  I’m a strong believer in the idea that, if you start moving your fingers, words will come out.  Move them more; you get more words.  Move them less, and, well, that’s when some folk start blaming the muse for deserting them.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not (entirely) trying to come off as pretentious.  I have dry spells.  In fact, I’m coming off a very long dry spell, where I focused on all the wrong stuff for all the wrong reasons.  I think I’m clear of that now.  I’ve been writing consistently for the last four weeks or so, because I decided to sit down and write.  That’s it.

(Ok – that’s not quite it – there’s a bit more that goes into all ‘that’; maybe I’ll flesh that out in future posts!)

How Does Music Come into This?

Not being a neuro-scientist, I haven’t delved too deeply into the ‘why’ or ‘how’* of music’s role in my ability to write; rather, I’ve concentrated on the ‘what’.  And what I’ve observed is that music not only keeps me on task, but keeps me on topic.

Well, the right music, that is.

(*in case you are interested in the ‘why’ and ‘how’, check out this article from sparringmind.com, or just Google “Mozart Effect”)

Music for Different Stages of Writing

Occasionally, I’ll hear a new song, and it triggers an image or an idea.  Infrequently, I’m quick enough to write it down; most times, however, I forget it.  But the next time I hear that song, the image is back, often in more detail than before.

Music to Inspire

This is how Cage the Elephant’s “Shake Me Down” became the inspiration for my very first short story.  While not a genre of music I listen to very often, the lyrics wormed their way into my mind, setting the stage for a tale about a war journalist finding himself marooned on a dying world – a victim of an interstellar war waging in the heavens above.

Just this past week, as I was searching for some Hallowe’en tunes, and came across Johnny Otis’s “Castin’ My Spell”, and poof – an idea for a future novel popped into my head (yeah, sorta like magic).

Music to Keep Me ‘In the Zone’

Other times, I already have the plot and/or theme of a tale set, and I seek out songs that I can play specifically when I write that story.  These songs I play repeatedly: over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and (well, you get the idea).  The song “Fehu” by Wardruna, a Norwegian group that re-creates Norse-inspired tunes, kept me focused for the better part of a year while I wrote my novel Darksea.

Music to Keep Me ‘In the Mood’

Yet another case is where I’m writing a type of scene – say a chase, or a fight scene – and I need to stay ‘pumped’.  There just happens to be a 10-hour version of the theme song to “Inception” on Youtube that is perfect at keeping adrenaline pouring out at maximum levels.  I’ve gotten quite a lot of mileage out of that one.

What’s Next?

NaNoWriMo – just around the corner.  Now stop reading and go plan your novel (with suitable music, of course)!

Motivation + Habit = Success at Writing!

September 12, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I’ll start my 21st post with some (more) words of wisdom from author David Farland, whose #WritingTips I always look forward to in my inbox:

Motivation vs. Habit

On the door at my gym, someone hung a sign that says, “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit keeps you going.”

I began working out regularly over 20 years ago. Since then, I’ve dropped about 75 pounds, and I’ve run or walked something in neighborhood of 22,000 miles. I can’t even imagine how much I’ve lifted in weights. But think about it, if someone had said to me, “Hey, Dave, why don’t you go run 22,000 miles?” it would have taken an awful lot of motivation to get me going.

However, it only took a tiny bit of habit.

Writing is much the same way. A lot of us try hard to get motivated to write a novel. But writing a novel is a lengthy process. Being motivated doesn’t help much, but developing good writing habits helps a lot.

I learned long ago that exercise is hard when you’re starting out. If you run three days, you’ll want to quit at the end of them. That’s when muscle aches and fatigue are the strongest. But if you run for a week, you’ll begin to notice that you feel better on the days that you’ve run. Soon, the day won’t feel complete without some exercise.

Writing is much the same. Jumping into a project is hard. Working on a novel for one day doesn’t really get you very far into it. But if you try making it a habit—if you bundle all of that motivation up and say to yourself, “I’m going to write for one hour a day this week,” you’ll find at the end of the week that you just don’t really feel that your day is complete if you haven’t spent some time engaged in creative recreation.

With my writing workshops, I generally hold them for a week. I try to motivate my students to write daily during that time, if only for a couple of hours. The goal in part is to teach the writers and get them to develop new skills, but just as importantly, I’m trying to get them into the habit of writing.

Quite often it works. I’ve gotten many letters from writers where the writer has said, “Hey, Dave, I got into the habit of writing at your workshop last year, and I’ve just finished my first/second/third/fourth novel!” Whenever I see that, I always feel as if the mission has been accomplished.

So here’s the key to become a writer: Use your motivation to create a writing habit. Long after you have run out of motivation, you’ll still be writing.

As usual with David’s words of wisdom, I find myself unable to express those ideas any better than him.

Full admission: I’ve fallen out of the *habit* of writing fiction daily.

I have plenty of motivation – heaps and heaps of it!

…Translating that into a habit, though (as David describes) is very hard, especially when you let everything else in your life take precedence. For me, this includes the other side of my quest towards authorship: ghostwriting.

I had an epiphany about this time last year.  It went something like this:

If I wanted to be a full-time writer (one who could feed himself, and his family), I’d need an alternate source of writing income. More specifically, it had to be something that I was already comfortable doing. I dallied in the realm of B2B (business-to-business) writing for a while, but realized that it induced ZERO passion for me. The switch to ghostwriting came about at the end of a course I took with Ed Gandia, who is one of the best-known B2B writers and coaches in the field. Ed got me in touch with Derek Lewis, the best-known writer in *his* field (business ghostwriting), and my goal of becoming a ghostwriter took off from there.

A year-in, and I feel like I’ve got a good amount of momentum going with my ghostwriting business (you can check it out at my other website, LiteraryGhost.com)… and now, it’s time to get back into the *habit* of writing fiction. Every Day. Even if it’s only a couple hundred words.  🙂

 

20th Post – getting re-engaged with writing in 2018

January 9, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Hello, and Happy New Year!

Now, I’m not generally a fan of New Year’s Resolutions.  However, I’ve been in a bit of a writing lull recently, and have been looking for a way to get my butt back into it.  So what better way is there to get motivated than to find inspiration in other people’s New Year’s blogs!?

…but first:

Recap of Writing; Fall of 2017

  1. Rejections, rejections, rejections. These little messages in my inbox are becoming quite normal now – in fact, part of me gets a little thrill when I read in the preview box:  “Hello, thank you for letting us read your story.  Unfortunately…”
  2. CANCON 2017 in Ottawa. It was great to meet some local and international authors, and do some <ugh> networking.  Looking forward to next year’s convention!
  3. Working full-time. This is my excuse for not getting a lot of actual words written this fall.  Thankfully, that will all change in February, when I’m back to part time! Yay!  (well, it had better change, or Trevor will not be pleased with me…)
  4. Getting started as a ghost writer… more to follow in a future post!

Ok – onto the motivational part:

Getting Back to Writing in 2018

Two author-bloggers that I follow have done all my work for me for this post.

C. Hope Clark – ready to get writing!

First, Funds for Writers blogger and author of the Edisto Island Mystery series, C. Hope Clark, talks in her New Year’s newsletter about taking a break over the holidays, then getting back into writing – 500 words per day, as a “benchmark minimum”.

Here’s what Hope has to say about January:

This time of year excites me. The whole clean slate sort of thing. In reality the days are no different, but there’s something rejuvenating at having a new chance at making a difference. . . at becoming better. . . at making longer and more productive strides toward a goal.

Read her full post here, and subscribe to her great free newsletter here.

Second, David Farland – renown author of the Runelords series – talks about how he hates the word ‘resolute’, but finds himself always making yearly resolutions.  This year’s advice to others is to develop a new relationship with your computer.  Here’s an excerpt of his #writing tips for the new year:

            …many of your habits are subconscious. Some people teach themselves that the computer is for videogames, or it’s for checking email, or it’s for chatting on Facebook. So when they sit down to the keyboard, by force of habit they immediately begin playing.

But what if you trained yourself to make writing your habit? What if you tried something like this:

Close your eyes and think about something that excites you. Perhaps it’s the idea of getting your first novel published, or maybe it’s an award you’ve won, or just the joy that will come when you complete your novel. Think about it, and let the excitement build for 15 seconds.

Now, sit at your computer, open the file to your work in progress. Do not do anything else. Instead, open your WIP and write one paragraph.

When you’re done with that paragraph, get up from your computer and walk around the room for a moment, thinking about what you might want to do with your work in progress.

Repeat step 1, thinking about something that excites you, and letting the excitement sweep through you.

I like it!  Read David’s full post here, and subscribe to his #writing tips by clicking his banner below!

Ok – with that advice in mind, it’s back to my keyboard for another 500 words today!

 

 

My Fantasy Novel is a Finalist for the OZMA Awards!

February 12, 2017 / / 4 Comments

You know when you’re out shopping and you come across the perfect gift for a loved one… but it’s no where close to their birthday, and Christmas is still many months away?  So what do you do?  Well, you buy it, and store it away for that special day.  And then promptly forget about it.

 

Or how about when you take time to book a winter vacation to some balmy, tropical paradise months in advance, briefly imagining the fun and the sun and the <hic>… well, whatever else you imagine might happen as your finger hovers over the ‘Purchase’ button (wincing slightly at what your VISA statement will look like next month)?  Then the cruel weight of the real world descends back onto your shoulders and the warm, gentle glow infusing you from having planned your winter getaway evaporates faster than you can say “I-don’t-want-to-work-I-just-want-to-be-a-famous-full-time-writer!!”

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…and then finally, seemingly out of nowhere, the departure date for your tropical vacation arrives.  And you’re like: …oh, yeah.  Oh, YEAH!!!

Yesterday, I was perusing what I call my “Tracker” – a spreadsheet I maintain to track where and when I’ve submitted all my (written) work.  The latest entry for my novel Darksea was: “Sept 2016: submitted to Ozma Awards“.

“Oh,” I thought to myself.  “Forgot all about that one.”

I clicked over to the Ozma Awards website, to find that they had already announced the finalists for the contest.

“Ah well,” I thought, preparing to move on.  Obviously, if I’d been a finalist, I would have heard, right?  Something stopped me, though, and just out of morbid and masochistic curiosity, I scrolled down to see the list.

This is what I saw:

 

…what what what?!?!?!

Could it be?  The novel that I’d essentially forgotten about, having nearly given up on sending it out to agents, has been chosen as a finalist for the 2016 Chanticleer Book Review OZMA Awards?!?!

In all honesty, I had been having difficulty maintaining my confidence and my productivity with my fiction writing up until about Christmas; now, however, with two short stories published and this latest news about my novel Darksea, I’m feeling the muse reawakening inside of me.

Time to (really!) start writing again!

Stay tuned to see if Darksea makes it to the next round of judging for the OZMA award!

 

 

How to Keep Writing Over the Holidays

December 18, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Feeling down due to the frantic pressure of institutionalized holiday cheer (aka: the purchase of tawdry commercial goods to exchange with family and friends that you’d normally keep no closer than several hundred kilometers at any other time of the year)?

Overwhelmed by the reams of tasks that always seem to build up at this time of year?

Have you already started your yearly holiday treat binge (can you say: let’s add candy canes to everything)?

Or… most importantly…

Have you lost your will to write?

 

…It’s insidious, the way it happens:

Maybe you’ve come off a month of crazy productive writing (aka: NaNoWriMo), and said to yourself: ‘hey – that wasn’t so bad.  I should keep this up for December too!’  And then you find yourself one week from the 25th of December, not having written a bloody thing…

Or maybe you’ve been in a good, dependable writing routine for months, which has inexplicably trickled down to nothing – without you even ‘noticing’?  (But you did notice it, didn’t you?)

 

So what’s your excuse?

Does your holiday make you see red…rum?

The holidays, of course.  They’re a time to slow down, relax, chill-out, enjoy life—what’s that, you say?  They’re the most stressful time of year?!  There’s no time to do anything, much less writing?!?

Of course there’s no time to write!  Everything else at this time of year is too important, you know?  Your family members or your friends or your employer – they all take precedence over you, don’t they?  Don’t be so selfish as to think you can fit this silly little writing habit into your holiday…

So when will there be time for you?  For your writing?

 

Key #1 to successful holiday writing: SELFISHNESS

Yeah.  It’s an ugly word.  But when’s the last time your kids, or your spouse, or your friends, or your boss said: “hey – why don’t you just take today for you?  Don’t worry about us.  We’ll manage just fine.”

I bet it’s been a while, eh?

Remember: if you were sick, they’d manage, wouldn’t they?

If you were away on a trip, they’d manage too.

And even if you said: “you know what?  I’m NOT cooking tonight”, they’d still somehow manage, wouldn’t they?  (They’d just order out pizza, of course.)

So let’s say you do it: pull back from life, and force in a few hours – hell, even a day! – of writing.  You might be surprised (disappointed, even) to learn that you’re not as critical to the smooth running of the universe as you have come to believe.

The first step to writing over the holidays: TAKE time for yourself.

(Oh, but be prepared for pushback.  In fact, you might have to be a bit of a Grinch about it!)

Alright, you’ve gone all selfish and grinchy, and you’ve bought yourself writing time. Now what?  Does the muse immediately jump right back into your life and send you into a whirling, whizzing frenzy of writing?

No, she does not.

You sit at the computer, aglow from you new-found (albeit temporary) writing block, ready to work the magic.  But hold on!  You haven’t checked Youtube in like, at least an hour, so maybe you should just– No, wait!  IT’S A TRAP!

 

Key #2 to successful holiday writing: ACCOUNTABILITY

This is my weakness.  I’m a classic procrastinator.  I work with hard deadlines.  But self-generated ‘soft’ deadlines?  They just make my monkey laugh. (No, I’m not being gross or weird – check out this TED talk on the inner monkey of a procrastinator).

Me, sitting at my desk, alone, without a deadline…  Well, that’s just a recipe for Zero Productivity.

I’ve tried lots of things to put the evil procrastinator monkey in its place:

-making detailed to-do lists, organized by degree of importance and urgency

-setting small, easily attainable goals

-promising myself rewards for work well-done

-the Pomodoro Technique

-setting up a tickler system of file folders in my desk drawer

-trying to work up enough shame and guilt to drive me to ‘get it done’

They all work at first.  Maybe a few days.  Maybe a few weeks, even.  Then something weasel’s its way into the works (typically resulting in an unavoidable change in schedule, even for just a few days), and I’m back to square one, surfing hours (yes, hours) of the best Youtube has to offer.  Or, very often, the not-so-best.

Why were none of these techniques my holy grail for a no-procrastination writing routine?  Well, for one, I don’t believe in a holy grail for anything (life’s too complicated for a single fix, imho).  Secondly, all of the techniques I tried were monitored and policed by… moi.

I can’t do it.  I wish my will was stronger.  And maybe, at some level, I’m just being a cop-out.

 

Regardless of the why, the who has to change.

(And that’s where I should end this post.  Because I don’t know what else to say.  I haven’t solved this problem yet.  I’m not sure who is… who.

Maybe I need an anti-procrastinator coach – someone to hold me to account for my actions and accomplishments day-to-day or week-to-week?

Maybe a writer’s group is the key (in-person would be better – you can more easily ‘slip away’ from an online forum).

Or maybe I need to be looking for a procrastinators-anonymous group out there somewhere?)

 

Anyways, as Christmas ticks closer and closer, I’ll be fighting my monkey, and looking for the solution to who I need to keep me writing.

 

And that’s it for 2016!  Until next year, I wish you and yours a happy and safe holiday season!

NaNoWriMo… here we go again!

October 10, 2016 / / 0 Comments
nanowrimo_crest

Get involved!                    Get writing!

I’ve been on a two-month hiatus from writing my fiction – life and work getting in the way as they always seem to do…

However, as November approaches, there’s a very good reason to get back into fiction writing – one that many writers find is just what they need to jump start their creative endeavours, as the cold weather settles in: NaNoWriMo!

Writing is a uniquely lonely type of thing.  For an introvert (like myself!) it is a welcome escape from the invasive outside world.  It’s therapeutic, too – a balm to soothe the raw stress from all those… people (said with the utmost disgust) intruding themselves upon me day in, day out.

However, I have found that the private nature of writing is a double-edged sword.  There are times when even this introvert (I cringe to admit) craves contact with other like-minded humans.  Specifically the writing kind of humans.

Now, writing being an activity whereby you are lost in your mind and you stare intently at a screen for hours on end, contact with other such beings can be hard to come by… unless you all share a similar goal.  Say, the writing of a complete novel in the space of one month.

Well, look no further: National Novel Writing Month has you covered!  In fact, they couldn’t make it easier for you to get involved – to whatever degree you feel comfortable with.  You fill out some information on yourself and your prospective novel, you pick the local community you’ll be writing with, and once November rolls around, you start writing!  There’s a nifty little graph that shows you how much you’ve written, and if you are on (or off) your word count goal.  There are weekly activities, both locally and across the world that you (again) can participate in, or not.

This will be my third year participating, though I’ll immediately admit I’ll be cheating just a bit – I’m aiming to complete the same novel that I started last year (an urban sci-fi mystery… thingy) – however many words that ends up being.

Regardless of my insidious plans, NaNoWriMo is just what I need to get my fiction writing kick-started again.

21 days and counting…

…in the meantime?  I’ll be getting another batch of agent queries out, and outlining the next bits of that novel that is going to write itself! 😉

Piggyback Your Writing Retreat onto Someone Else’s Hobby!

July 24, 2016 / / 0 Comments

nice-pen

How would you love a four-day writing retreat for one?  Can’t see how to fit it in?  Let me tell you how I just did it.

 

I was in Lake Placid NY this past weekend for the Ironman race.  No.  I’m not an Ironman.  Nor do I ever think I will be.  I’m what’s referred to as an Ironman Sherpa.  My job is to help cart the equipment for, drive around, and generally support one of the Ironmen athletes (who just happens to be my husband).ironman

If you don’t live with an Ironman, or a triathlete in general, you might not understand their routine.  It consists of them going out and doing ridiculous amounts of swimming, biking and running for about a year, in preparation for one full day of – you guessed it – swimming, biking and running.  Plus, they generally go to bed early.  Every night.

Now, if you happen to be a writer – one who enjoys writing in relative peace (like me) – then you might already see how this could be beneficial to your craft.  If, on average, someone training for a race like this puts in two hours per day of training, seven days a week, that turns into roughly 730 hours of writing time (not to mention the time you get after they go to sleep at 8:00pm).

730 hours of writing is just under 15 hours per week – basically the equivalent of a part-time job!  Think of what you could achieve, if you had that time set aside exclusively for writing!!

freetime

Unfortunately, I did not make use of those hundreds of free hours my spouse granted me.  No, it’s not because of procrastination (though there’s a fair amount of that in my schedule L ); alas: we have kids.

Ugh.  The bane of a creative mind.  Small humans whose sole purpose in life is to figure out when you most need a few moments to yourself during the day, and seek to fill those moments with needy little whines, self-generated disasters, pointless arguments with siblings and the ever popular throwing of a fit.  We’ve got two of them.  Small humans, that is.  Two boys.  One who loves to bug, and one who loves to shriek incessantly when bugged.

So for me, those hundreds and hundreds of hours when hubby was out training, I was on Daddy-duty.  Don’t get me wrong: I love my boys.  I love writing too, though.

The payoff comes on race weekend.  Finally – a full year of training has gone by, and we’re ready for the big day (whew!!).  Triathlon is an equipment-intensive sport.  More than one person (ie: the athlete) can comfortably handle.  That’s why it’s nice to have someone along for the race – the Sherpa.

We arrived at Lake Placid – amidst the beautiful Adirondacks – on Thursday afternoon, and left Monday morning.  The race was on Sunday (like – all day Sunday – it takes about 12 hours to complete it.  No joke).  Aside from a few administrative tasks (attending briefings, dropping off bikes, driving the course), that leaves most hours of the day free…

By the way, my husband is my biggest supporter when it comes to my writing, and it was he who saw the opportunity for me; he who suggested I accompany him.  So while I’m taking credit for this blog, it’s he who gets credit for the idea.

 

When exactly did I get my writing in?

-on the drive here and back (it took us 3½ hours each way);

-while my husband attended his pre-race briefings;

-while he did his last few workouts;

-while he dropped all of his kit off at the race site;

-while he slept (restlessly, stressing about the race!);

…AND

-on race day, of course!  12 hours of uninterrupted ‘me’ time.  It was awesome.

Swim start of the 2016 Lake Placid Ironman.

Swim start of the 2016 Lake Placid Ironman.

So now, I’m on the lookout for a new race for him.  I’m thinking a marathon in the fall – that should be worth a three-day mini writing retreat!

 

Are you a writer-with-kids like me?  What do you do to fit writing into the circus that is parenting?  Drop me a line and let me know!!drop_a_line

My first published short story!

February 13, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I suppose it was going to happen sooner or later.

After all, it’s a numbers game: send enough of my short stories to enough magazines and/or anthologies, and someone out there is bound to bite, right?

Well, early last week, a UK online magazine accepted my short science fiction story “Flesh” for publication for their January 2017 issue!  My first fiction writing success!

“Flesh” is the story of an elderly man who has given up everything for a chance at a new life.  But everything is not as it seems (dun, dun, DUN!!!).

I’m truly excited – this is a very significant step for me.  Now, I have a ‘publication history’; no longer do I need to leave that part of my submissions or queries blank!  I also get to have my fiction read by a much larger circle of people (beyond my husband, and the members of critters.org, to which I belong).

I had ‘set’ myself a goal of having my fiction published by the end of 2015 (fully aware that it wasn’t entirely in my hands); I’m pleasantly surprised that I was only off by a few months!  😉

Anyways – enough reveling in my success.  I have another set of agent queries to send out, not to mention crafting another couple short stories.  I’m also working on getting my freelance b2b copywriting career off the ground, by the end of the month…

Always lots to do, as a writer!

 

 

The Big “R”

October 24, 2015 / / 1 Comment

rejected

 

Ah yes, I’ve read this over and over from blogs by authors, agents and publishers – writers have to develop a thick skin – not the type at the end of your fingers from typing so much, but from suffering through an endless, impersonal torrent of rejections.

I’ve been entering short stories competitions for several years now, and have yet to break ‘honourable mention’ or ‘grab-bag winner’ status.  Nevertheless, the periodic rejections were spaced widely enough apart not to make to much of a dent in my psychological armour.  So no big deal.

I’ve currently got about half-a-dozen short stories circulating out there, searching for a market.  To date, lots of ‘thanks, but no thanks’.  Again – periodically enough not to get me down.

Now that I’ve finished a novel, however, and the search for agents is underway, the rejections are starting to come in at an accelerated rate.  Oh, and I’m reaching out for some freelance work too, to flesh out my writing even more… all to no avail, so far.

So, putting it all together, I’m getting close to having a steady stream of rejections coming in, from four unique sources.  It’s starting to suck.

sad_baby

       I can see why so many writers throw in the towel.  I feel like doing that right now.  I mean, what’s the point?  All this time and energy spent writing and researching and putting myself out there… for what?  Why hasn’t anybody seen my genius yet?

snoopy

Well, I’m not giving up.  I think I’m close.  I can’t *quite* feel it yet, but it’s not far away.

Plus, writing is just so much damn fun; why would anyone not want to be a writer for a living?!  So let’s keep chipping away.  There’s bound to be a few suckers wise individuals out there who’ll eventually end up publishing my stuff… right?! 🙂

Here’s a quote from Pierre S. Dupont IV that fits my situation perfectly, at the moment, and actually does give me a glimmer of hope:

       “I’m in a wonderful position; I’m unknown, I’m underrated, and there’s nowhere to go but up.”

Ok – that’s enough moping for now – I’ve got to get back to my world-building for the novel I’m writing during this year’s NaNoWriMo!

 

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