Recently I wrote a blog post about Kitchen Nightmares, that ended up bearing a lot more material than I thought it would. Honestly, I thought that was going to be one post. It spanned into two and gave me ideas for two more blog posts. This is post one of two.

Sometimes writing works like that. A lot of times, actually. When you constantly ask your brain to create, it’ll start doing it on its own.

It’s never a bad idea to help it along, though. And this is where the reality of being a writer sets in. The physical and mental act of writing is not all you must do to be a writer. You must do things, every day, to till the soil of your mind so that it’s ready when you plant a seed.

I’m not suggesting that you go away from the world and live as a monk. Though there are days I’ve considered it. These are seven things I do all the time to encourage my mind to create new stories.

YouTube videos, and other media

Otherwise known as learning about the world around you. I watch YouTube videos about random stuff all the time. Matt Santoro is one of my favorites, which I’m sure you’ve noticed if you follow me on social media.

These videos have inspired many a scene in my work. Usually horror scenes. I learn a lot about strange historical facts, creepy ghost stories, frightening unsolved mysteries, and lots of other things.

I also watch tv, read magazines and listen to podcasts about random stuff. Anything I can find to learn new fascinating facts. Or, not actual facts per se, since I don’t really believe in ghosts. But it all goes into my brain as sort of a compost pile.

Freewriting or sketching and dream journals

Much of what I write every day is not meant for anyone but me. I free write, of course, and I journal. I’ve mentioned this several times. I also keep a dream journal and do sketches. Now, here’s what I mean by sketches. I might sit somewhere in public and write a backstory for the old man sitting next to me waiting for the doctor. I might write a poem, or jot down my thoughts about the line of people waiting to participate in a public lunch outside of a church.

Getting out of your routine

I like routines. They make some of the more boring parts of my life run on autopilot. I stick to the routines suggested by the Flylady, and my house is a lot cleaner for it.

That said, routines can be death to creativity. If you do the same thing every day, your brain’s not going to work as hard. You need your brain to keep active and frisky to come up with creative new stories.

I highly suggest investigating your neighborhood. I live in this tiny little town, and I still manage to find things to do. We have a local theater, a tiny museum for Asian art, and all sorts of Summer events downtown.

Even if you can’t do any of that, there are still new things you can do. Eat at a new restaurant, read something in a genre you don’t normally read. Try a weird lipstick color! (I started wearing gray lipstick recently. I quite like it, actually.)

Vacations and breaks

Soil gets tired after awhile. Perhaps you’ve heard of crop rotation, the practice of switching out what’s planted in a field so that the ground can give and take different nutrients.

We need to do the same to our brains. Go on vacation when you can, even if it’s just to a neighboring city. My family and I actually vacationed in Pittsburgh a few years ago. 10/10, would do that again because a week wasn’t long enough to do everything we wanted to do.

If you can’t take a whole vacation, I definitely suggest taking at least a day to either have a little adventure or do the exact opposite and goof off. Go to the local thing you always say you’re going to do but never actually do. Or, sleep in and then go get brunch. Even better, try to fit in one of each of these days a month.

Honestly, I suggest these things to everyone. Too often we live our lives working and taking care of our homes. But we aren’t here to just survive. We should love our lives.

Retreats

I talk often about writing as a business. It’s easy to forget that while selling my stories is a business, creating them is not. Writers are artists, and none of us started this as a viable career move. We sometimes need time to just focus on the writing.

If you can, book yourself on a writing retreat. I’ve never gotten the chance to do this myself, but I have taken a day to focus solely on my writing alone. I was working on a rough draft at the time. I headed downtown alone, going first to a coffee shop and then to the library. I had lunch at my favorite little diner, writing while I ate. It was a whole day where I did exactly what I always want to do, write. While I can’t do this often, I recommend doing it when you can.

Reading everything

Finally, I suggest that you read everything you can. I spend a lot of time online reading everything from news sites to entertainment sites. I read most genres. I love reading, so this hardly a difficult thing. I’m imminently suspicious of a writer who isn’t obsessed with reading.

So what do you think? What do you do to till the soil of your mind? Let us know in the comments below.

Psst! Want a free book? Click here to get a free copy of Days and Other Stories right now!

Seven pieces of short and flash fiction, showcasing the days of seven very different people. You will find a busy librarian, a lonely man with a guitar and a woman who finds a dream crashing in her brain.

On Monday, we talked about why I love writing a series. I should love it, I’ve written four Woven novels and four Station 86 novellas. I also write short stories about both.

Yeah, but everything in this world needs balance. Nothing is all good or all bad. So, here are four reasons why writing a series can really blow.

You can start to repeat yourself.

When you’re writing about a cast of characters for a certain amount of time, you can find yourself falling into a routine. Much like a couple that’s been married since time out of mind, you know your characters so well that nothing they do can surprise you anymore. Or, you’ve already thrown everything you can think of at this character, and now you’re out of ideas.

That’s when it’s time to shake things up. Someone needs to change, or something different needs to happen. Someone dies, get’s a new job, does something exceedingly stupid and becomes the villain. Something in the core dynamic of the series needs to change, or you’re just writing the same book over and over.

You’ve established a world with rules that you have to follow.

My husband has this really bad habit now that Broken Patterns and Starting Chains are done. He’ll read through a draft of a future book with me, and start saying things like, “I don’t like what you named this character. I think it’s too similar to the name you gave this other character. Why don’t you change it?” (Example, Lenore, and Lorna. Or Morgan and Monroe.)

Well, gee, that’s a swell idea. I wish you hadn’t mentioned it after I published two books with the characters having those names because I’m sure as hell stuck with them now!

Once something’s published, you’re stuck with it. It is a fact in that series. And while some authors get away with retconning certain facts, it’s hard to do so without alienating your readers or coming off as amateurish. We’re not writing comic books here, people. We can’t just bring someone back to life.

Worse, for me at least, is that you have to keep track of the rules you’ve put in place. Characters features, locations, settings. These things have to stay the same, or an explanation as to why they didn’t is in order. This, at least, is helped by keeping a story bible from day one. Every time you write a new character, add them to the bible. What do they look like, what do they do? Add in anything you can think of that you’re going to need to keep track of for that character. Otherwise, you’ll be grabbing your own books off the shelf and flipping through for references.

Getting bored is almost unavoidable.

Here’s a sad fact of life. Nothing is exciting and wonderful forever. Even the best of things get boring after a time. I’ve finally managed to overplay Hamilton, for instance.

Writing the same world, the same characters, the same story for too long can get boring. No matter how exciting the story, it’s not fun to write about just it.

That’s one of the reasons why I write a novel and novella series. I switch from one project to another in between drafts to take a step away from those worlds. Right now, I’m working on Station Central, the fourth book in Station 86. When I finish that draft, I’ll go back to Sandwashed, the first in a new collection in the Woven extended universe. It’s totally different, and it will feel fresh to me.

Oh, and that’s another thing that’s helped in Woven. I wrote three books about Lenore, Devon, Sultiana, and Victor. Now, I’m switching gears and writing about a new cast that is quite different from them. It’s the same world, and it’s moving the core series story along. But it’s also a new cast, a new point of view, and new incites into the world I’ve created. The bonus here is that not only is that fun for me, it’s fun for the readers.

You will get more attached to characters, and it can be hard to do what must be done.

This is one that I really struggled with while writing Missing Stitches, the third Woven novel. It’s the end of the series, which meant it was time for some people to die. Some people who I’d been writing about for years now. Literally, years.

It was hard. It’s one thing to kill off someone who’s just been in one book. But to make that call to take away someone with a family and connections to the world is something not to be taken lightly.

I mean, I still did it. But it was an emotional process.

It can be hard to know when to quit.

Now, I have a series outline for both Station 86 and Woven. There’s an honest end of the story for both that I am working towards. I have lots of book ideas for both, and I keep careful track of ideas as they come to me.

Even so, I recently went through my book idea list for Woven and realized that there were some that just didn’t fit. Or, at least could probably be novellas not novels.

Writing a series can become comfortable. So comfortable that a writer doesn’t know when it’s time to move on. This is how cheap-ass sequels happen the movie world, and how tv shows jump the shark. I never want that to happen to me. I’ve got a final book planned out for Woven, set in present time. That’s going to be the end of it all. (Psst, I’m saying it now because I don’t want anyone to accuse me of milking the series when I get there. Spread the word.)

You see this not knowing when to quit issue most often in series that don’t have a solid storyline through them. Things like cozy mysteries like The Cat Who. I loved that series until every book started to feel the same. It wasn’t as engaging anymore.

Don’t let this happen to you.

What do you think? Are you writing a series? Can you think of a series that should have ended a long time ago? Let us know in the comments below.