Author, Dungeon Master, Speaker
Writing Advice
Welcome to a Dungeon Master Exposed. If you’ve never heard of Dungeons and Dragons or don’t know what a TTRPG is, I may not be the kind of Dungeon Master you seek. But since you’re here, you may as well stick around. I do occasionally talk about leather armour and whips.
I’ve been pondering about bootstraps lately—those handy loops on the tops of boots that help you pull them on more easily. Growing up, I often heard, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Well-meaning adults would use this saying to encourage me to work harder and stop being lazy. Of course, if I was slacking off or not getting my work done, they assumed it was because I didn’t understand I needed more effort.
According to the website Useless Etymology, “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” was coined in a physics textbook in the late 1800s but was not meant the way well-intentioned adults use it today. Instead of suggesting that you need to concentrate harder and put more effort into your tasks, its original meaning was to indicate the impossibility of a particular endeavour. The phrase was meant to illustrate that one cannot lift oneself off the ground by simply pulling on their bootstraps.
As creatives, when we find ourselves stuck we may believe we’re lazy or not putting in the necessary effort to complete our work. We may hear advice to overcome our barriers, such as, “Write every day,” “Get your butt in the chair,” “Put your nose to the grindstone,” and one of the most well-known: “Just do it.”
The problem with this well-intentioned advice is that it assumes you don’t want to do the work. Your lack of work ethic is your unwillingness to overcome your lazy nature. Most of this writing advice is about spotlighting personal failings and character flaws.
Additional unhelpful comments said to me when trying to inspire creativity include, “You’re just being lazy” and, “If this truly mattered to you, you would find the motivation to pursue it.” All this did was add to my overwhelm and confusion as I struggled to understand why I couldn’t motivate myself to do something I loved. Often, I would find myself sitting on my couch staring at the wall, wondering why I couldn’t get started.
As a writer who couldn’t understand this barrier to creativity, I once convinced myself I had writer’s block. While lacking motivation is seen as a character flaw, writer’s block is a socially acceptable excuse that often garners sympathy. But as deadlines approached, I would have days of extreme focus and get the work written–convincing me that writer’s block could be overcome with the right inspiration. I just never knew what that inspiration was.
I started telling people that writer’s block didn’t really exist. I read somewhere that the brain is divided into two hemispheres: the right hemisphere is responsible for creativity, while the left is more analytical. According to the article, the dominant left side needed to get worn out if someone struggled with creativity. Engaging in a left-brained activity could help energize the creative side. However, I’m not a neurologist, so I can’t say if this article was accurate.
When I visited schools and did workshops, I’d tell people, “You just need to sit down, focus, and get it done. If you truly want to be a writer and finish that book, just do it!” One of my favourite examples was, “What if we experienced writer’s block in other industries? What if we had mechanic’s block or plumber’s block?” I was probably trying to convince myself that writer’s block didn’t exist, hoping I’d feel more motivated.
I recall standing before my students, encouraging them to start writing while they faced a blank page. During those moments, I couldn’t help but think, “I haven’t started my book. I haven’t written in a while. I still struggle to get myself in the chair and begin.”
More advice came to me. Write every day. Write even one page daily. If I could write a page daily, I could finish an entire book by the end of the year. One page wasn’t impossible, right? But none of the advice that I was given ever helped me. It sounded like this to me:
“Just get your butt in the chair” (I’m on the couch. That’s a chair, isn’t it? Am I not writing because the chair is too comfortable?”) “Don’t think about it, just start writing.” (If I could start writing, I’d be writing.) “Write the first draft for yourself.” (If I could write a first draft, I wouldn’t be struggling.) My favourite was “Get a new journal to write in.” (I now have a collection of untouched journals. Does anyone need a journal?)
I became skilled at hiding my shame for not being able to complete my work.
Writing can often feel challenging, regardless of how much we want to do it. For some writers, the above advice clicks, motivating them to create. But for some of us, the struggle to get started brings anxiety, even when we have a solid plot and engaging characters and can visualize every moment of the story. When we finally sit down to write, we freeze up, unable to find the motivation. Instead of writing, we clean the house, play video games, or scroll through social media. As a result, guilt sets in because we know we should be writing.
My past writing technique was this:
1) Get an idea for a story and get excited about writing it.
2) Get overwhelmed thinking about how many steps it takes to write the book and build a solid anxiety base from that overwhelm.
3) Decide to write an hour daily and then feel guilty when that hour passes and no writing gets done.
4) Instead of writing, turn a part of the home into the perfect office designed for inspiration.
5) Never use that part of the home.
6) Clean the home.
7) Join a writing group and never show up due to being too filled with shame because you haven’t written anything.
8) Set a project deadline that will pass by with little to no writing getting done and add a solid layer of guilt to your overwhelm, anxiety, and shame.
9) Go to a noisy cafe, sit at a table, and write half the book all at once.
10) Rinse and repeat steps 8 and 9 until the book is done.
I followed steps 1 to 10 when I wrote Rancour, Children of Ruin and The Three Spartans. When I wrote Pyre, Renegade, Flying Feet and A Spartan at Sea, the publisher set the deadline, so Step 8 had external consequences. I may have added an extra step writing those books as I was likely giving myself an ulcer trying to meet the deadlines.
Just as I once focused on the brain’s two hemispheres, I now consider two types of minds within society: the importance-motivated and interest-motivated brains.
Most people have brains that prioritize what is important, and those people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps while putting their butt in the chair. They complete their taxes on time and are punctual for gatherings and events.
I do not have that brain, though I thought I did.
I remember taking a walk with a friend when I was waiting to get diagnosed with ADHD. I had been seeing a therapist for a couple of months, one who had told me that while she could not diagnose me, she did think I would benefit from moving forward as though I was diagnosed with ADHD.
I confided in my friend my struggles with motivation (and everything else ADHD). I waited for him to tell me that I was being ridiculous. What followed was him laughing at me as he said, “Do you think you’re neurotypical? Of course, you have ADHD. How could you not know this?”
My brain prioritizes what’s interesting. While it might seem like a flimsy excuse for laziness, it’s when I try to conform to how society expects me to work that I experience task paralysis. When I sit down to write, I become overly focused on all the steps needed to complete the task and everything else I want to do. As a result, my brain freezes. I didn’t know what task to start first, and most often, I’d do nothing or whichever task was easiest. This is a part of living with an executive functioning disability.
If this sounds familiar and you suddenly feel recognized, you might share traits with an ADHD brain. It’s important to note that this doesn’t necessarily mean you have ADHD. It simply indicates you may possess characteristics similar to those seen in ADHD. I mean, you could have ADHD, but remember, I’m not a neurologist or a psychiatrist.
I did manage to write seven novels before my diagnosis. I developed strategies that helped me complete my work. And to function in society at a reasonably high level. Little did I know that many of my strategies are ones used by those with ADHD–such as writing alongside a friend or sharing with those friends my self-imposed deadlines. These approaches helped me somewhat, but they weren’t sustainable solutions.
I may not be a neurologist, and I still don’t completely understand how the brain works, but I’ve gained a better insight into how my brain functions.
After learning about the interest-motivated brain through articles, other people’s experiences, and therapy, I began formulating a plan for what I needed to do to jump-start my brain.
These strategies that have helped me might benefit you if your brain operates similarly to mine.
1) Don’t listen to advice that makes you feel lazy.
2) Understand that if you have a brain motivated by interest and not by what’s important, that doesn’t mean you can’t do what’s important.
3) Keep a whiteboard on your fridge (or someplace you look often) where you can write two to three tasks you want to get done that day .
4) Hide your TV if you can. Put it in a cabinet, under a blanket, in a room with a door that can close shut.
5) As much as you can, make it easier to write than to do anything else.
For number five, I completely rearranged my home. I moved my living room to where my office used to be and set up my office in the former living room space. This way, whenever I wake up or spend time at home, the most accessible option is to sit at my computer and write. (If you live with a family or other humans, this may not be an option for you.) Since my interest-focused brain tends to gravitate toward whatever is easiest, making writing more accessible helped me overcome my task-avoidance nature.
As I mentioned before, having a good therapist and being on the proper ADHD medications have also made a world of difference in managing my struggles. I still have challenging days, and there are some weeks where nothing I do will motivate me to write (or clean the house, do my taxes, or return phone calls). Because of this, I’ve added one final rule:
6) Be kind to yourself. Be gentle with yourself, and remember that when someone tells you to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” that phrase doesn’t mean what they think it does.
As I write this, I’m compelled to add a seventh rule: If someone tells you to just do it, or to get your butt in a chair, or implies that you’re lazy, consider telling them to go bleep themselves.
And with that, I’ll say thank you for listening to a Dungeon Master Exposed. And hopefully, I am the kind of Dungeon Master you’re looking for.
