You've reached "the end"...so now what?

Wordplay and Witticisms: If a big gun on a ship came unfastened, it could roll around and cause all kinds of damage...that is where this term meaning "out of control" comes from.

My current writing soundtrack: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra

If your pants are still flaming and your fingers still burning, keep writing!

For those of you who have reached "the end", whether that end sits at 20,000 words or 200,000 words, it is time to step away from the computer. You heard me, back away from the keyboard...

That's right, after laboring intensely on your novel, it is time to take a break. Join the land of the living (AKA the land of non-writers). Leave your new baby for awhile. Don't read it, don't edit it, don't even look at it - for at least two weeks.

You may experience some sadness, a touch of poignant longing or a full-blown depression. That's OK - it is all normal. After all, you have been laboring with this project for an extended amount of time. Most likely, it encompasses joy, sorrow and every emotion in between, not to mention some of your best friends or most loathed villians. But, in order to continue on your quest of becoming a writer, you have to step away and gain some objectivitiy. Get reacquainted with your significant other, children, pets and...if you absolutely have to, the mountains of laundry that reproduced during your writing binge more rapidly than the most prolific rabbit.

Then, as Chris Baty says in No Plot? No Problem!, "when calm has regained, when you've gotten a little objective distance from your manuscript, then you will be ready for the next awesome experience: reading it."

Wordplay and Witticisms answer: Loose cannon
Check out Orijinz for more word play!

Flush that excuse...

Wordplay and Witticisms: Pigs were put in bags and sold in medieval markets. Unscrupulous sellers would dupe their buyers by replacing the pigs with large cats. A buyer figuring out the ploy inspired this phrase...from the game: Orijinz (answer at the bottom)


My current writing soundtrack: Elevator music...I am babysitting a friend's eight week old baby. He's asleep and I am desperate to keep it that way!


Have you started writing yet? Did you set a time or word count goal, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem? Did you carve out a stretch of time to sit down, ala pantalones flambé, and type furiously?

No time, you say? Think again…

In his book No Plot? No Problem, National Novel Writing Month organizer Chris Baty says “being busy is good for your writing”. Yes, you read correctly – being busy is good for your writing! Here’s why:

Grab an apple and don a Newtonian thinking cap…an object in motion tends to stay in motion. So if you are all ready busy, adding another thing isn’t that big of a deal. You are all ready going at mach 5 - 1,001 to-dos are not that different from 1,002, right?

Yes, I know you would like to slap me right about now, but bear with me...

Baty believes that having to carve writing time out of your myriad of other obligations makes it a “treat”, something exciting and special to do for yourself. Whereas, if you have loads of time to write (at a writer’s retreat for example), suddenly writing is an obligation. Now, don’t get me wrong, writer’s retreats and long stretches of time to work on your novel have their place, but it is not when you are composing your first draft. During first draft craziness, you need to just light your pants and fingers on fire and go like mad, something more easily done when you know you are working on finite writing time, snatching moments here and there.

So, sorry, one excuse decidedly flushed down the toilet…Crazy busy? Running like mad? Going in twelve different directions? Good for you – now get to writing!

Wordplay and Witticisms answer: The cat's out of the bag