In Boot Camp we don't start the new Year in January, because what that does is make everyone switch off in December.
Instead set goals for DECEMBER. Have a goal for December 1st-20th (a whole month's work) but, more importantly, start January on December 26th and make your January target the biggest of the year. There's real incentive, and like the footballer who gets his retaliation in first, the bigger you make January, the better you'll do for the year.
WHY?
Well, you start with stories, flashes and subs IN THE BANK. You have invested. Second, feedback from hits and publications will arrive earlier and give greater incentive (meaning February will be more motivated). Third you have proved what you are capable of.
I used to be a running coach for a running club. The favourite race was the 10K. What do most people do in a 10K? Well, they usually start too fast, suffer, get it back together again around 4-5 K, then save themselves for a big final K, and save themselves within that K for a good final 200.
BUT EVERYBODY DOES THAT.
"What happens," I asked, "if you push your absolute hardest, not from 9K to 10K but from 8K to 9K?"
What happens is this. 95% of the field is easing off, or cruising in that K, getting ready for what they imagine is their big push (the one nobody else is thinking of?)...
Now if we push on for 3-4-5 minutes in that "easy" K we can pass so many people we normally don't beat. We are THRILLED and motivated (it hurts a bit, but sheeeit I've NEVER been in front of joe, Mary, David before...)
The extreme positive-feedback from passing so many people lifts the spirits. Energy comes from deep resources. Come the 9K marker you are higher up the field than you have EVER been.
Of course now you are hurting, hurting, hurting, and there's a whole 1,000 metres to run. 990 metres, 980 metres.
But are you REALLY going to throw away the best position you ever had?
NO. What happens is that the faster time (for 9K), the great position, MOTIVATES US to hold on for the last K. We look at our watches and think, "Hey, a personal best, a personal best!" and we keep it going.
When I brought this tactic to the club, 90% of the runners got a personal best in their next 10K.
Writing is no different. Those who write most, submit most, in general do better. Those who set themselves tough targets do better than those who find excuses. Those who try and fulfill their targets EARLY do better than those who dick around and try to meet goals at the last minute.
AND HERE IS ONE THING TO REMEMBER
Quantity does NOT hurt Quality. In fact, we've consistently found the exact opposite. The more we write, the harder we write, the more "in tune" we become, the more instinctive we become as writers, the more fired-up, and quality RISES.
I can 'grind out" a decent longer story but all my greatest successes have come from fast writing in extreme circumstances.
There is NO BENEFIT to writing slowly. NONE.
The faster, looser, "drunker" we write the more our unconscious feeds us gems, the more flowing our work becomes. Don't stop to re-read, don't stop to correct spellings, punctuation or grammar. Just FEEL THE FORCE and write.
Editing is for before stories (more in a later blog-posting) and for AFTERWARDS. But when writing, sing, scream, shout.
If you were trying to seduce someone, would you stop and reconsider your technique?
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NOW TELL ME, doesn't that fire up neurons?
The picture's from a set I bought at auction. I hope to have them on the walls at the Chapel. But don't they just tickle the writing nerve, make you wanna write summat?
Do you "wait for inspiration"?
Or do you go out and create it?
My last three competition wins all came from a Boot Camp daily flash, from a list of prompts like in the last blog post (usually about 10-12 prompts). One of those stories included ALL the prompts. It was about a number of limb-disabled ex-Army guys running the London Marathon. These guys had been soldiers, then mercenaries until one incident made them give up and dedicate their lives to clearing mines.
Now they were running the marathon dressed as characters from Robin Hood.
What did I know about being a soldier, being a mercenary, fighting a dirty war in a central African country? What did I know about clearing mines? NOTHING, absolutely nothing would ever make me "think-up" a story like this. It would never just simly rise from my unconscious or more-conscious memory.
One of the prompts was "My brother's habit is bloody annoying. " and I typed that. Immediately I thought INVERT IT, make it a pun, and thought of a moonk's habit.
Instantly I had:
My brother's habit is bloody annoying. He’s Friar Tuck and I’m running as Maid Marion and we are only four miles into the London Marathon and the swish-swish-swish-bloody-swish is driving me crazy.
“Fer Christ’s sake, Colin, I told you, go as the Sheriff of Nottingham, we’ll never catch Robin Hood and Little John now – and that’s me and you down fifty quid each.”
OK, I had an opening voice, two characters (my brother in real life is a Colin and we've run marathons together, so all that element is 'natural" to write.)
I was writing FAST and barely thinking but I knew almost immediately that this story would need to turn 'deeper" and not be a blokey story MERELY about running a marathon...
so I (not knowing where I was going) wrote:
“Ah sod off, brother,” Colin says (he always says it like that, brother heavy on the emphasis). Then he reminds me the London is his seventeenth marathon and Robin and Little John have gone off far too fast.
Don’t ask me why we do it, raise this money. Don’t ask me, because I know and telling people breaks my heart, but why do we dress like idiots every time? My forty-seven inch D-Cups make Jordan look anorexic, but bloody hell do they bounce, swish-fucking-swish, bounce-bounce-bounce. AND WE HAVE TWENTY-TWO MILES TO GO.
Do you see how the darker paragraph (still in a blokey voice) "TURNS" the story EARLY and sets the reader up (and the writer) for a deeper, more meaningful, experience?
and I was off (I still didn't know the plot) just these two blokes, running, swish-fucking-swish, bounce-bounce-bounce
But I KNEW a story would emerge. It was "effortless".
All I had to do now was stay being one of them and bleed.
And note how "The Point-two" gets resonance.
I'll post the story later today. Incidentally it was somewhat "sanitised" to send out. Soldiers fucking swear a fucking lot, and mine did too. That was the only editing done, to cut down on thre profanity. profanity on the page is about ten times as noticeable as in everyday speech.
Here's another picture:
WHY AREN'T YOU WRITING?
Alex
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