Here’s a technique I’ve used a few times to get the creative juices flowing.  You’ve read an illustrated book, right?  Usually, the writer writes a story and then the illustrator reads the story (hopefully) and creates an illustration based on it.  Some illustrations become so wedded to the original work — think Sidney Paget’s illustrations of Sherlock Holmes stories — that they become almost inseparable in the reader’s mind.  But why not the opposite?

Here’s how the technique works:  Find a painting and write a story based on it.

It doesn’t have to be a painting.  It could be a photo.  It could be a photo of a sculpture.  But whatever it is, the key is to find something that evokes an emotional response.

So much of art is just a response to other art.  It’s a continuous conversation, and by playing this game you get to take part in it.  And if you’re worried about “stealing” someone’s idea, don’t be.   Beyond staying away from trademarked characters — Spiderman, Star Wars, etc. — you have nothing to worry about.  When I use this technique, I usually go to the Internet, copy the image, and paste it right into my document.  Of course, you never send this out, or post it online, because it’s quite likely that image is copyrighted, but there’s nothing wrong with using that photo or painting for inspiration so long as it stays on your computer.

A few other suggestions:

• Try using a search engine, searching specifically for images.  For example:  http://images.google.com.  Type something like “girl with bucket” or “haunted house” and see if something grabs you.
• A site like Deviant Art is great for illustrations:  http://www.deviantart.com/
• Flickr, a photo sharing site, is another great one to try:  http://www.flickr.com/explore/

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I personally believe that setting word or page quotas is much more effective than time quotas. This is mostly because if you tell yourself you’re going to sit in the chair until you’ve written a thousand words, you’ll find your fingers leaping into action much faster than if your fingers know that all you have to do is sit in the chair for an hour to call it a success.   (I realize we’re attributing a lot of independent brain power to those fingers, but bear with me.)   But I know that word quotas just don’t work for everyone. Some people find themselves freezing up if they know they have to write a certain number of pages.

I still can’t quite recommend just saying “write for an hour,” because that goes against some of the basic writing principles that I believe — that writing faster is generally better, that anything you can do to encourage yourself to write faster is helpful in keeping ahead of your critical voice.

So here’s a variation that works for me: Write as many words as you possibly can in one hour, and then track your progress.

Or thirty minutes. Or fifteen minutes. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to start with less time and work your way up.  Maybe you start by writing 250 words in an hour. Then it goes up to 500. Soon it’s 750. Rather than focusing on something you can’t control — why a particular story or novel hasn’t sold, etc. — you’ll have a measurable way to evaluate your success in an area you can control.  And that’s definitely a good thing.

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I’m about to run out to the Oregon coast for a three-day writing workshop — a fun opportunity to talk shop with lots of other writers, something I don’t get to do nearly often enough — but I wanted to share this link before I go.

On Monday, Fantasy Magazine, published my collaboration with Ray Vukcevich, “A Stray.” You can read it for free online.

Well, today they’ve published an interview with Ray and I about the collaborative process.  We even included a couple of our email exchanges at the end, which you might find interesting.  I also agree with Ray’s comment that when two people collaborate, then a third person emerges, which was certainly true in this case.  A lot more planning and pre-writing went into this story than is usually the case for me — usually this sort of thing happens more in my head, and even then more on a gut level.  I believe Ray was saying the same was true for him.

But going back and forth about the story via email, shaping it and molding it a bit before setting a word on the page — that was a very valuable experience.  You might find some of our notes interesting too, especially if you read the story, because it shows where we made decisions about the direction the story was going.

Whether those decisions worked or not, well, that’s up to each reader to decide.

If you’ve followed my blog, you know I’ve written about the Pages Before Play principle before, but it’s so effective that it deserves a mention here.

The basic idea is this: You withhold all activities you enjoy until you’ve met your page quota for the day.

It’s simple, isn’t it? Surfing the Internet, reading books, watching television or movies, playing video games — whatever you do for fun in your free time, you don’t allow yourself to do those things until you’ve met your quota. The idea is to use those activities as extra motivation to get your pages done — and not only done, but done sooner and faster.

More than any other principle, this is one I’ve tried to live by. I’ve found it to be one of the most effective ways to keep myself focused. My big Achilles heel is the Internet. It’s easy to tell myself I’m just going to check my email, five minutes tops, and the next thing I know I’m off ogling a gadget on Gizmodo or arguing with some pinheaded pundit (in my head of course) on Politico. Before I know it, an hour is gone — and the time I would have devoted to writing some new pages is gone with it.

But I also have to say: Although it’s a deceptively simple game, and tremendously effective, I’ve also found it to be incredibly difficult in actual practice. I’m always falling off the wagon. Temptations abound, after all.

That’s okay. You’re going to fall off the wagon. Just get back on again. It’s also a great game to whip out now and then as a corrective measure, when you find your productivity dropping. You want to watch Lost? All right, buddy, then get those pages done.

(A lot of people use a variation of this game, but here’s a hat tip to two of them who emailed me something along these lines:: Michael Jasper and Cyn Balog)

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It’s not often that a magazine that pays professional rates makes one of your stories available for free.  It’s even less often that the story is a collaboration with a writer you’ve long admired, Ray Vukcevich.

But in this case it’s true.  “A Stray,” a tale of a man who’s slowly going blind and his encounter with a very unusual stray cat, is now live and freely available at Fantasy Magazine.

Check it out.  I’m very happy with this one — I think it’s a good blend of both Ray and my work, something that neither of us would have written quite this way on our own.  And later in the week, they’re going to post an interview with Ray and I about the story and our collaboration, so be sure to return for that.

So far, I’ve been focusing mostly on ways to boost your productivity.  Well, all that productivity begs the question:  How do you keep coming up with ideas?  Most serious writers learn very quickly that story ideas are a dime a dozen — they can literally come from anywhere.  It’s what you do with those ideas that matters.

That said, having a bag of tricks you can use to come up with story ideas on demand is immensely helpful.  The Title Mash-Up is a good one.

Here’s how it works in essence:  Take parts of two titles of two stories and combine them into a new title, then write a new story about it.

That’s it.  Take a couple anthologies from your bookshelf and type up a list of all the titles.  Or, better yet, go to Amazon.com and do the same with anthologies you haven’t read — easier not to be tethered to the author’s original ideas when you do so.  Then start copying and pasting a list of new titles.  This works best with longer titles, ones that have conjunctions (”and,” “or,” etc.).  Pick one and start writing.

I’ve used this one a number of times.  I published a story in Asimov’s a couple years ago called “The Tiger in the Garden.” I’ve since forgotten the original titles I used, but I know that I used this game to get it, combining “The Tiger” and “in the Garden.”

The great thing?  No two writers will write the same story.  You might look at that title and think fantasy or a children’s story; I turned it into a science fiction tale about a terrorist computer hacker in hiding on a small backwater world, a man whose handle was “The Tiger.”  Now he’s suffering a debilitating mental illness that’s crumbled his once brilliant mind so that he’s only a shadow of his former self.  His only joy now?  Working in his garden.

See how it works?  The title is just a touchstone to get you thinking; to get you to ask questions.  It’s a starting point, nothing more.  Try it out.

(Hat tip to Dean Wesley Smith)

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One of my big efforts this year is getting all of my short stories online, available for purchase.  With the increasing popularity of the Kindle, and with Apple’s big foray into the world of electronic reading with the iPad,  I don’t think it’s a market that any writer can afford to ignore.  So here’s what I’m going to do.  The second Sunday of every month, I’m going to publish a reprint of one of my stories, which I’ll make available in both Kindle format and as a PDF over on Scribd for those of you who want to read them on your computer.  Every now and then I’ll even throw in a story for free.  Most will be available  for between $.99 and $1.99 depending on the length.

I’ll put the first few pages here on the blog.  If you’d like to read more, just click the links at the bottom.

First up, “The Liberators,” which originally appeared  in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in April 2004.   I’ve actually had this story up on Amazon for a while and it’s been my top selling story.

The Liberators

Scott William Carter

I heard the report of a cannon a half second before the boulder on the ridge above us exploded.

Pebbles pinged off my helmet. The ventilator fans whirred behind my ears, and a bead of sweat trickled down my cheek. The suits did a good job of filtering the air, but the inside of my helmet still smelled slightly metallic.

It was the dead of night, but my Visosuit enhanced the image, giving the rocky gully an amber tint. The Dulnari had lousy night vision, so we always fought after sunset. I quickly counted ten black, sleek-domed helmets in the gully. Each helmet was marked with a different number, and Rina’s number 22 was on the far end. We broke up two weeks earlier, but I still liked having her close during combat.

“Major Steed,” my brother’s voice crackled over the all-suit frequency, “report.”

Damon sounded calm as a man could be. I watched Rina for a reaction, but she didn’t move. I knew she had been spending her time lately with that egghead, Lieutenant Dyle, but I still wondered if she and Damon would hook up now that I was out of the picture.

“Got a group of two hundred Dulnari pinned in a mountain bunker, Colonel,” I said to him. “The rest of the target planet has been contained.”

I stopped thinking of the planets as having names long ago. After a while, they all blurred together.

“Good . . . We need to finish this planet up and move on to the next one. Get it done quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

He cut the transmission.

I suddenly felt tired. There was always another target. Such was the way of life in the elite LS-37, a Liberation Squad who had liberated more planets from the tyrannical rule of the Dulnari than anyone else. We were legendary in the Unity Defense, our slogan whispered among lesser soldiers like a hallowed prayer. LS-37, Angels Protected by the Glory of Heaven.

I peered over the edge of the gully. The mountain sloped up gently until it reached the rectangular peak. An opening big enough for their cannons circled the peak; there were two or three cannons on each side. We could fly up there in under three seconds.

The problem was that we’d be easy targets. What we needed was a distraction.

Our suits were controlled by the electrical impulses in our brains. I thought the all-suit frequency on, and it was. “Lieutenant Dyle,” I said, “take Delta Group and do a flyby over the mountain, dropping flash grenades. The rest of us will storm the bunker. Hold for my command.”

There was a brief pause, and then his reply came back.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“All other teams, await my command,” I said.

Before I even finished the sentence, Rina was scooting in my direction. She was a small woman, but inside the bulky black Visosuit you would never know it.

Our suits were mini spacecraft in their own right. The slim packs on our backs were loaded with various bombs and missiles, and the fingers of our gloves were equipped with lasers. The metaplak material could withstand a direct hit from almost any handheld weapon.

Since the Defense had equipped us with the suits, our battles lately had been decisively won. We moved in fast, destroyed the Dulnari’s local military, and left just as quickly. A recovery team followed within a day, helping the planet rebuild.

When Rina was close, I could see through the tinted faceplate to her face — or not really her face, but a re-creation of her face on the external screen. She was Asian-Latino by heritage. She had narrow, slanted eyes, and her skin was the color of coffee with cream. The dust in the air made it hard to read her expression.

“Sir,” she said, and I could tell she was fighting to keep her voice calm. “Sir, could I suggest that we all attack as one? There’s no need to put Delta Group in danger.”

I wondered how close she and Dyle had truly become. “We need a distraction, Private,” I replied.

“But, sir, if we all attack–”

“End of discussion,” I said curtly.

She glared at me through the dust, then scooted back to the end of the line. The rest of the faceplates were turned toward me. I knew my history with Rina was no secret.

I switched to the all-suit frequency. “Delta Group, attack now!”

My own suit had something my soldiers’ suits didn’t — a small monitor, mounted inside my helmet just below my faceplate, that allowed me to see what any of my soldiers saw. I thought the command Screen 40 and up came Lieutenant Dyle’s view.

Dyle was directly over the mountain. The enemy’s cannons fired, one after another in rapid succession, and the ground beneath us trembled.

I turned on the all-suit frequency. “All other groups, attack now!”

We took to the air just as white flashes began to spot the mountain. There were five teams, each with ten drop soldiers, so the sky was filled with fifty of us. I felt the antigrav thrusters trembling beneath my feet.

We descended on their bunker like a swarm of black hornets. All around us were flashes of white light. I followed my men through the opening, blasting the Dulnari standing there with my finger lasers.

We stepped over the bodies we just brought down. They were humanoid, much like us: similar height, two arms and two legs, breathing air and expelling carbon dioxide. One of the most amazing discoveries since contact was made with other species was that these facts held for most of us.

But the Dulnari had a more pronounced, wolf-like nose, and their sense of smell was keener. Their leathery skin was dark gray except for the skin around their yellow eyes, which was a luminescent blue. Their heads were smaller, and individually, they were not as smart. But they had more specialization in intelligence; when they acted in concert, their total intelligence exceeded ours.

The big difference, though, was that the Dulnari were ruthlessly ambitious in a way we never were. Every sentient species we encountered had the option of joining the Unity Worlds. The Dulnari took them all by force.

Until we decided to stop them.

A dimly-lit tunnel circled the bunker. We took out each cannon-room one at a time. It all seemed to be going well until Lieutenant Dyle shouted out over the radio.

“Hit! . . . Going down!”

Rina stared at me. Grimacing, I changed to Dyle’s screen, and saw the image of the ground rushing up at him. My screen went to static, then the image returned. Now he was looking at the sky.

“Must do this . . . ” he groaned.

Then the worst possible thing happened.

He removed his helmet.

I knew this because I was suddenly seeing his face, bloodied and bruised, on my screen. His blond hair was matted against his scalp. The helmet must have been down on the ground next to him.

“Lieutenant Dyle!” I cried.

It was no use. Without his helmet, communication was impossible. As every drop soldier knew, the one thing that you could not do–that you were strictly forbidden to do–was to remove your helmet. Even if a planet had a breathable atmosphere, the helmet gave a soldier full access to the Visosuit’s abilities, allowed him to remain in contact with other soldiers, and permitted his superiors to use his visuals for tactical decisions.

I was deciding what to do when my brother bellowed over the frequency.

“Just what the hell is going on down there, Major?”

“Sir,” I replied, “Lieutenant Dyle’s helmet–”

“I can see what happened. What I want to know is why.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps –”

“The Med will be there in less than two minutes,” he said. “Let it get him out of there. Subdue the bunker.”

“Sir, don’t you think we should provide cover for the Med?”

“No time. The Dulnari are fleeing the bunker as we speak. Concentrate your troops on stopping them.”

He clicked off. The rest of the troops had moved ahead, and it was just me and Rina lagging behind.

“Let’s go,” I said, stepping past her.

She didn’t move.

“Rina? You heard the orders.”

“Kaden needs us,” she said.

“The Med–”

“I’m going.”

She ran back into the last cannon-room. I followed, yelling her name, but she didn’t stop. She took to the air, rocketing through the opening.

——– continued ——–

Read the rest of the story:

[$1.99 Kindle]
[$1.99 Scribd]

Me: All right, Kat, this time when you play I want you to count the
notes. Out loud.

Kat: But I hate that!

Me: I need to know you’ve got the rhythm down.

Kat: No! It’s embarrassing!

Me: Why is it embarrassing?

Kat: Because Calvin’s listening!

Me: Calvin? He’s four years old. He doesn’t care about you playing the
piano. Half the time, he forgets to put on his underwear. Does he act
embarrassed?

Kat: No.

Me: Well, there you go.

Everybody knows that old Nike slogan, right?  Just do it.  For the sake of writing, I’ve taken the liberty of modifying it slightly to “Just Finish It.”

In practice, it translates this way:  No matter how you feel about the project at hand, you must finish it.

A lot of writers, especially in the beginning, suffer from what I’d term APS — Abandoned Project Syndrome.  Novels, stories, articles, poems are all started with great passion, but somewhere along the way that passion dissipates.  Maybe you don’t think that original idea was so good after all.  Maybe it seems like more work than you anticipated.  Whatever the reason, this is very common, and that’s when you have to push through those roadblocks and finish it anyway.

Most writers are the worst judges of their own work.  It’s true.  So whether you think that story or novel sucks or not is irrelvant.  What is relevant is that it’s not a story or novel or essay or haiku unless it’s finished. If it’s not finished, it’s nothing.  It can’t be sold.

If you’re starting out, here’s the real problem with abandoning projects halfway through:  You never learn how to finish.  I mean this in two ways.  One, you never learn how to write the conclusion to your story — it’s like trying to learn how to play the piano while skipping half the keys.  And two, you’re not learning the mental skills of seeing a project to its completion.

There’s also another benefit to finishing what you started:  Most people receive a great boost from finishing a project, a boost that can propel them right into the next project.  If you don’t finish, you don’t get the boost.

So finish what you start, whether you like it or not.  In the long run, it’s doubtful you’ll be able to look back and know which projects you loved writing and which ones you hated –and even if you do it won’t matter because few writers can judge their work accurately.

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I got one of those Social Security summary statements in the mail yesterday. You know the ones: They tell you your monthly benefits depending on which age you retire — 72, 65, or early retirement at 62.

I saw the 62 and a thought popped into my head: Hey, I’m nearly 37, that’s what . . . only 25 years and I could cash some of those checks.

It wasn’t the 25 years that set off warning bells in my mind. It was my use of the word only.

Only? Only 25 years? When did two and a half decades merit being described as only? While all the normal panicked thoughts raged through my mind — I haven’t done anything yet, what about my goals, I’m old and I’m still just treading water — I realized that the reason I can say only is because I can actually envision twenty-five years. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. It was just a number that didn’t mean anything. But now, I can look ahead and see those years passing.

So the moral of the story? Well, naturally I’ve decided to be more careful about opening the mail. You never know what you’ll read in there that’ll make you feel old.

And to be careful with the world only. Obviously, it can be a dangerous word.