If the question has just pushed you into the predicament of either scrunching up your face or staring at the ceiling in an effort to tally up your various scenes and arrive a reasonable figure of days, then the answer is probably an unqualified “Err... no.”

Surprisingly enough, the timeline is a facet of story-telling (or, more specifically, outlining) that is often overlooked. I overlooked myself it for years, until I happened to read an anecdote in a magazine article, in which the author mentioned that he had once wrote a story with an eight-day week.

Whoops.

Whenever I’m caught up in the grand whirl of plotting tragedies and travesties galore, I find it much too easy to get carried away and lose track of the time (in more ways than one). When writing A Man Called Outlaw, which features a dual timeline, I remember leaning back in my chair on numerous occasions and counting on my fingers, trying to remember on which day of the week a certain event was supposed to have taken place. It could get frustrating to say the least.

My fantasy work-in-progress, Dreamers Come, features a timeline with its own particular challenges: namely, my hero’s existence in two parallel worlds, ergo his having to live each day twice—once in each world. In the early stages of the outlining process, it became clear to me that I would need to take steps to organize my timeline, lest I lose all control and find my characters struggling through their own spate of eight-day weeks—or worse.

The first step, as I see it, is controlling the timeline. Generally speaking, the less time a novel covers, the more suspense and intensity, the events therein will project. For instance, let’s say I need my hero to save the world. If I fail to put a time limit on that saving, then despite the grandiose scale of the hero’s task, the lack of a time crunch is going to translate to a lack of suspense. On the other hand, if I give him only thirty minutes to accomplish the impossible, his every action takes on new meaning.

Shortening the timeline also has the added benefit of cutting out the unnecessary scenes. If the hero is rushing all over the world, trying to save the day, he’s probably not go have time to stop by Aunt Mary’s for a cup of tea and a chat about neighbor’s new pit bull. But that’s a good thing, ‘cause chances are, the reader isn’t going to be too interested in either Aunt Mary’s tea or the neighbor’s pit bull.

One you’ve figured out exactly how long your story should take to play out, you can move on to step number two: recording the timeline proper. Using an old calendar (banks and other businesses often provide free calendars upon request), I choose an appropriate month for my novel’s events and start blocking out days.

Unless your story covers several months and therefore provides the risk of your mixing up, not only the days but the months also, it really isn’t important to match up the month in which in your story takes place with the correct page in the calendar. In most fiction, the actual dates won’t matter; however, if you’re writing historical fiction that does require adherence to certain dates—and therefore agreement between dates and days of the week—it’s wise to choose a calendar page that accommodates this. For example, when I was outlining my novel The Rain Still Falls (which takes place during the Battle of Britain in September 1940), I took care to pick a calendar page in which the first day of the month fell upon a Sunday.

In each appropriate calendar block, I scribble a brief phrase pertaining to the main event of that day. In The Rain Still Falls, most of my notes comprise only a word: Blitz; Church; Escape; Party, etc. The notes need not be extensive, since I can refer to my outline for more details whenever necessary.

For the most part, I’ve found the calendar trick entirely sufficient, but depending on your story and how quickly events transpire, you may need to plot your timeline even more extensively. Dreamers Come takes place over a two-week period. The first few days of that period involve only one or two major events a day and didn’t require me to map out every hour and minute. However, as my characters and I delved further into the story and the events began spiraling faster and faster, I ran the risk of trying to make my characters accomplish more than was humanly possible in a single day.

This is where I discovered yWriter—and also where I‘m going to introduce the idea of computing the hours and minutes, the third and final step. At first glance, it probably sounds a bit obsessive, not to mention time-intensive. But, in a story that demands the author to know what his characters are doing at practically every moment of the day, yWriter’s helpful “Time” feature comes in very handy.

As you can see, the program allows you type, right into your outline, the exact time at which a scene takes place, as well as how long the scene is supposed to cover. I’ve particularly notice its usefulness in regard to various journeys my characters have been forced to undertake. Instead of having their ride from one city to another encompass one hour on one day and two or three the next day, yWriter’s Time feature forced me to be consistent.

I’ve found all of these suggestions to be easily accomplished, not to mention fun, and they go a long toward organzing the sometimes unruly timeline of a fictional story.

Unfortunately, however (and perhaps a bit surprisingly), the metaphor and its cousin the simile can be very tricky to master. The perfect metaphor has the power to zap clarity and freshness into any description—to bring a passage to life—to make what is ordinary suddenly unique. It’s this heady experience that tempts most of us into that wild waltz of synthetic similitude. But don’t be fooled: with all that power comes a lot of responsibility. Misused metaphors can not only brand your writing as that of a rank amateur, they will also rip your readers right out of your story.

This is not just a pitfall of the inexperienced; even veteran authors like Jodi Picoult misstep on occasion. In her book My Sister’s Keeper, her description of a roast beef dinner as a newborn baby curled up on the platter, not only made me gag, it also popped my suspension-of-disbelief bubble and destroyed the verisimilitude of her scene.

Before I go any further with the caveats of Master Metaphor and Madame Simile, let me share some examples of metaphors in marvelous action. These are the kind of metaphors that bring scenes to life and infuse color and vivacity into word pictures. (Unfortunately, as I collected these gems over the years, I neglected to note the sources, so if you’re reading along and find something you’ve written, please accept my adulation of your brilliance and forgive me for not giving due credit.)

• “ice-chip stars”

• “a foggy night like moist black velvet”

• “snow falling in great white blossoms”

• “the air conditioning smelled like a wet sheepdog”

Obviously, not a writer.

Arguably (after all what isn’t arguable in writing?), the single most important tenet of fiction can be summed up in the old saw “no conflict, no story.” You can break every rule in the book (pun intended) and still have a whopper of a story—so long as you remember to throw in a dash of conflict. Or, actually, a heaping tablespoon or two would be preferable.

The simple fact is: fiction has its very basis in conflict. If the main characters aren’t clashing, if there are no wars, if the aliens are content to stay unobtrusively in their own galaxies—then we really don’t have much of a story do we? Think about it. If Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy had hit it off from the beginning, we never would have experienced all that wit and sizzle in Pride and Prejudice. If the North and South had simply resolved their differences over a handshake, Scarlet O’Hara would never have needed to escape a burning Atlanta. And if the Martians had minded their own business back on Mars, Orson Welles could never have made history by freaking out thousands of people with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast.

So how does one going about manufacturing this most precious of story ingredients? Well, happily enough, conflict is actually one of the easiest (and most fun) bits of storycraft. As humans, we all know a little something about anarchy and chaos, and it really isn’t that much of a stretch to borrow some of that from real life and spread it around on the page. But just in case you’re feeling stumped, here are a few suggestions.

• Personality clashes. This is the easiest (and, often, the best) way to throw a little conflict into the mix. Character interaction is always at the heart of any story; therefore, it’s the character clashes that will produce your most consistent conflicts, and generally your most interesting ones as well. The key thing to remember about clashing characters is that they must clash for a realistic reason. Characters who get along perfectly for the first third of the story can’t suddenly, for no apparent reason, explode into a manic fistfight. Of course, we probably don’t want our characters to get along perfectly for the first third of the story (how boring is that, right?). Instead, we try to craft characters who will naturally push each others’ buttons. And I’m not talking just good guy/bad guy confrontations. Make sure your hero is surrounded by foils. If you find yourself with a character who tends to affirm your main character at every turn, spice him up by throwing a little unexpected rebellion into the mix.

• Put characters in unexpected situations. Many stories base their entire premise on this idea (think of the Pevensie siblings tumbling through the wardrobe into Narnia or young upper-class Jim Graham sent to a Japanese prisoner camp in J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun.) But, even if you don’t go quite that far, you can still take advantage of the unexpected by forcing your character into situations and relationships that go against his personality or inclinations. If you have a heroine who is terrified of speaking in public, why not put her in a situation where she has no choice? She’ll either cave under the pressure or rise to the challenge—either way, the reader will be hooked.

• Up the ante. For a long while, I had tacked on my bulletin board a note which read “Think of the ten worst things that could happen to character.” Kind of sadistic, I know. But readers aren’t interested in stories about characters who sail through life without ever encountering hardship, danger, or sadness. Rip your characters apart, put them under excruciating pressure, and then when things look like they couldn’t possibly get any worse—make sure they do.

• Inner and outer battles. Nancy Kress, in her fantastic book Beginnings, Middles & Ends spoke about the necessity of including both inner and outer battles:
  

  “Every paragraph in your story should accomplish two goals: advance the story (the plot), and develop your characters as real, individual, complex and memorable human beings.”

  In other words, conflict has to occur not just on the larger scale of the novel (whether that be a family crisis or World War III), but also on the smaller theater of the character’s inner life. Every scene must include the outer battle (the physical reaction to conflict) and the inner battle (the psychological and emotional reaction to events). Any scene that lacks one or the other, is teetering on the edge of the Cliff of Not Enough Conflict.

• Building to a climax. Although it’s vital that every scene contain some level of conflict, it’s also important to monitor the general flow of that conflict. You have to open your story with enough to conflict to grab the reader’s attention, then keep building on that conflict to keep him reading. But you don’t want to pour on the danger and the distress so thick in the beginning, that you run dry by the end of your story. Using foreshadowing and tension, build your conflict steadily to the high-point of the climax.

• Balance. Stories are about balance. A tale in which is there is no conflict is going to be just about as boring as watching condensation dissipate. But a tale that never pauses to let its characters (or its reader) catch their breath is boring in its own way. We have to find ways to adjust the level of the conflict. We have to give our characters a chance to slow down and get their thoughts gathered for the next attack. Stories must consist of both large- and small-scale battles. Mix things up. Throw in a variety of conflicts in all colors, shapes, and sizes, and keep both your characters and your readers guessing.

Forget what the peace pundits (not to mention your mother) are always telling you, and heap on the conflict. After all, a little peace and quiet never got an author anywhere.

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”

—Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

As a writer, it’s easy to become accustomed to peeking into random characters’ minds. One of the thrills of writing stems from the ability we authors have to be “all-knowing” within the scope of our story worlds. Unlike real life, where we sometimes (make that often) struggle to understand the opinions, emotions, and needs of those around us, in writing we have the power to understand everything. I know why my characters react in sometimes unexpected and seemingly irrational ways. I know their histories, and I know their futures. I never have to wonder why they think or act; I just know.

As a storyteller, it is my job, of course, to share this omniscience of mine with the readers. After all, that’s why we read, right? To find out how and why the characters are going to react. And, indeed, that’s why I write: to share my characters’ experiences, emotions, and opinions with my readers in a way they can understand, commiserate with, and perhaps be empowered by.

But does that mean I should spill everything I know?

Beyond the obvious explanation that readers don’t want to know everything (who cares if the bad guy has an ingrown toenail or how the main character’s best friend happened to purchase his VW Bug?), sometimes the secret to punching up a scene, adding layers of meaning, and accurately mimicking reality, is to leave out certain details. But that (surprise, surprise) is easier said that done.

Hemingway was a master of what is now referred to as the “iceberg principle.” In fact, he took the art of subtext to a level of his own, often expunging everything from his narratives but the bare bones and leaving the reader to glean all the facts merely from the characters’ actions and dialogue. Although not everyone appreciates Hemingway’s sparse style, it’s undeniable that he was able to create a vibrant sense of immediacy and, yes, reality in his stories.

For me, subtext and subtlety share more than just their first three letters. They are, in fact, interchangeable. If I find myself trying to create subtlety in a scene, what I am actually doing is working with the intricacies of subtext. And, if I consciously try to puff up my subtext, the not-so-subtle tool of subtlety becomes my chief utensil. In my fantasy work-in-progress Dreamers Come, I’ve struggled with subtext more than in perhaps any other work.

From beginning, one of my POV characters, Allara Katadin, proved herself practically inaccessible to anyone—including me. An introvert who guarded who emotions behind a mask of ice (I found myself privately referring to her as the “Ice Queen,” a title that actually ended up making its way into the story), hid her true feelings and fears even from herself, and rarely said more than was absolutely necessary—she refused to cooperate on the page. The scenes of other POV characters rattled out from beneath my fingertips in comparative effortlessness to the literal hours I spent glaring at the blinking cursor whenever it was Allara’s turn to speak up.

She didn’t want to talk—not to me and not to the other characters—and when she did actually thaw herself out enough to venture a comment or two, her words were veiled. She rarely said what she meant; she skirted around sensitive subjects and refused to hash them out in the open.

Naturally, all of this left me burbling under my breath and yanking at my hair. But as I continued to battle my way through her scenes, I began to notice something. Sometimes what Allara wasn’t saying became the focal point for entire scenes. As she and the other characters danced their way around her fears and her anger, surprising patterns began to emerge, and I began to see facets of Allara’s character that, although they had always been there, under the surface, I had never really noticed or understood.

Her refusal to speak out demanded the necessity of some serious subtext for her scenes. She allowed me to layer details and subtlety (of both dialogue and action) into her scenes. She forced to me to be more creative and meticulous in showing her attitudes and opinions, rather than taking the easy route and sharing these things through dialogue or narrative.

It took me all of half the book to fully understand this character (and I’m sure I still have much to learn), but she’s also taught me much about subtext. When I first began writing, I approached her as if the one-eighth of her character that protruded above the water was all there was. Little did I know that her true self lay submerged far below the surface. After a little diving (and much pulling out of my hair), what I found in this character was no less than an introduction to the art of iceberging.

My education is ongoing, of course, and something tells me that I’m still looking at the just the very top of the iceberg. But, although certainly frustrating in its intricacies at moments, I’ve no doubt it will continue to be an exhilarating learning process.

The so-called Rules of writing are what make stories work. And, probably more importantly, they’re what get authors published. Readers and publishers alike expect stories to follow certain parameters. Authors are supposed to maintain consistent POVs, follow traditional story arcs, and play fair with foreshadowing and revelation. When authors violate these (and myriad other) “rules,” they risk angering the two most important people in their professional lives—the publisher who pays them and the reading public who ensure that they continue to be paid.

Authors who blow off the recognized standards of fiction aren’t likely to make it very far in the business. Or are they?

Although the likes of Aristotle have been writing fiction how-to for centuries, the current glut of instructional manuals and workshops are a relatively new innovation. Every age in history has recognized certain (sometimes varying) “good forms” of writing, but the would-be writer of yore certainly wasn’t able to stroll down to the corner and buy himself the latest copy of Ye Olde Writer’s Digeste.

I find it very intriguing to note that some of the greatest literary minds of all time thrived in this period before our current inundation and even obsession with THE RULES. The likes of Dickens, Cervantes, the Brontës, and even more modern literary giants such as Conrad and Conan Doyle, were certainly great students of their art, but they were not slaves to the recognized institutions and time-honored guidelines of that art. Even more interesting is the fact that the greatest writers of our own times are often better at innovating than they are at following the old paths.

Now please don’t think I am encouraging literary anarchy. Writing without rules would be chaos indeed. From the tiniest dictum about comma placement to the broadest expectation regarding plot use—rules are not only important, they are necessary. If someone was paying me to read every book in which I’ve stumbled across a glaring, irritating, confusing, or farcical gaffe, I’d probably be able to afford my own private mountain by now.

The bare fact of the matter remains that authors need Rules. Writing fiction—especially novel-length fiction—is a precarious and heady experience, and we need all the guidance we can get. It is a tremendous blessing that information about writing is so readily available these days. I’ll never forget the first writing how-to book I read. I was in the process of writing my fourth novel, and up to that point, I’d written mostly on sheer instinct. The fact that I’ve always read voraciously meant that I’d already been instilled with some pretty good habits. But not until I began learning about the framework beneath a story’s trappings—about all the little gears and cogs that make a story work—did the old light bulb finally flash.

Once I understood the rules—once I understood the basics of POV, dialogue, setting, character, plot, theme, etc.—suddenly, I not only had a gut feeling about what made a story work, I knew. Gut feelings are awesome. I truly believe that no one can succeed as a writer without them. But without knowledge to back up those gut feelings, a writer is essentially groping around in the dark.

That said, the rules can only take you so far. In fact, the whole idea that these rules are even Rules at all is a mistaken notion. Writing, as a form of art, is all about experimentation, innovation, and expansion. Within the confines of standard expecations, you can only expand so much. In truth, there is only one rule of writing: All rules are made to be broken.

Now before you get all excited and start running around the room screaming “Révolution!”, let me tap on the brakes. The rules are most definitely made to be broken (just ask James Joyce), but they aren’t made to broken often and certainly not by just anyone. To just throw up your hands and ignore the rules indiscriminately is stupid. Why would anyone—publisher or reader—want to stumble through the ramblings of a beginning author who didn’t even have the discipline to learn the bare bones of his craft?

Before you can go around smashing (or even poking at) the esteemed foundations of literature, you first have to understand those foundations. To break a rule without knowing you’ve broken it is ignorance. To break a rule intentionally—that’s innovation.

But, be wary. Innovation is a risky and oft-misunderstood venture. Just because you break a rule on purpose doesn’t mean your readers are going to appreciate it. So proceed with caution. Even veteran authors don’t cast caution to the wind very often.

I can’t think off-hand of even one rule I’ve ever had the need to intentionally break. But, in the back of my mind, I know that I have earned (and, in some cases, am still earning) the right to break a rule should I ever need to.

Révolution, anyone?

The simple answer is yes. The not-so-simple answer is yes and no. Personally, I’ve always thought that the “show-and-tell” aphorism was a poor statement, simply because, for a writer, showing and telling both amount to the same thing: explaining a story to the readers.

So what’s the difference?

The Short Explanation:

Telling is summarizing. Telling gives the readers the bare facts, with little to no illustration.

Showing is elaborating. Showing gives the readers the details of a scene, including what the character(s) are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, thinking, and feeling emotionally.

The Long Explanation:

The differences between showing and telling are perhaps best recognized in actual examples. Following are some modified snippets from my fantasy work-in-progress Dreamers Come.

Telling:

Orias ran away from the soldiers. His horse jumped a fallen tree branch. Someone shouted for him to stop. The soldiers halted and aimed their rifles at him.

Showing:

From behind came the pounding of hoofbeats. Tree branches whipped across Orias’s face and showered his saddle with leaves. He gritted his teeth, his face set in the snarl that had become his protection against an unjust world. They would not catch him. Must not catch him.

He spurred his horse’s bloodied sides, and his fingers itched to reach for the sword sheathed on his back. His blood thundered in his veins, pulsing against the oyster white of his skin, sharpening his reflexes, narrowing his thoughts to razor intensity.

His tired horse stumbled, and the hoofbeats behind drew nearer. Voices shouted: “Stop now! In the name of Mactalde, surrender!”

He spat an oath and ducked another tree branch. Even the man’s name—dead though he was these twenty years—burned through the air like a curse.

Hoofbeats slowed and faded, surpassed by the rapid clatter of rifles rising to aim and the click of bolts locking into place. Orias’s blood congealed in his veins.

The difference, of course, is immediately discernible. The first example gives the reader the necessary facts, but the second example brings those facts to life.

So how does one go about bringing those necessary facts to life? It isn’t a question that can be answered in a sentence or two, simply because all of fiction is about showing. Every step, every trick, every nuance of the fiction craft is for the express purpose of bringing settings and characters to life. No author will ever master the art of showing, simply because no author will ever master the art of fiction. Perfection in this area, as in all others, is something we’re all striving for.

Hence, the obvious answer to our question is simply to keep honing every area of your craft. If you can improve just one minor area of plot or character development, you will also have improved your mastery of showing. That said, however, I do have a few more particular suggestions for concentrating on this heartbeat of the craft.

1) Focus on the senses. Probably the easiest way to bring life into a scene is to concentrate on one or all of the five senses. Tell the reader what the character sees or smells. If your scene is set in the middle of a summer rainstorm, mention the smell of wet asphalt and the shimmer of oil in a mud puddle.

Instead of merely saying that your character walked into a flower shop—and leaving the details for the reader to fill in—show us what the character encounters. Tell us about the ring of the bell over the entrance, talk about the splashes of scarlet and yellow, the perfumed air. Use your imagination, dig deep for little, telling details that will make the scene “pop” in the reader’s imagination.

Of course, you certainly don’t want to go overboard with your descriptions. Especially in our television-fueled days, most readers aren't patient enough to thumb through pages of description (no matter how lifelike). Instead, you have to select a handful of the most important details and scatter them throughout your action and dialogue.

2) Utilize vivid language. Specificity is the life’s blood of fiction. You can write about a character who is walking down the street—but how much more evocative is it to talk about him shuffling down an alley or promenading down the aisle? Use specific verbs and nouns, and tastefully select only modifiers that share important facts.

Before I close, I should make note that telling is not without its place in fiction. Not every scene or action needs to be fully dramatized. Relatively unimportant scenes can be summarized, recaps of information (such as when your character is telling another character information with which the reader is already familiar) can be brushed over, and unsavory details can be avoided.

Once you acquire the habit of painting on the broader canvas of showing, you’ll find that the art of fiction is more boundless than even you could have imagined.

Once we’ve thought about it, I think most of us would agree that that the answer to the first question is an indisputable no. Perfection in art is unequivocally subjective. What one reader hails as perfection, another will throw across the room in disgust. As readers, our preferred reading experiences span the gamut from cuddly, reaffirming romances to gritty, life-challenging noir. And that’s awesome. A world without variety would leave us authors with very little of interest to write about.

But, inherent in this subjectivity, we also find the answer to our second question. Because the perfect novel will never exist, authors have lots of room in which to play around and find their niches. Therefore, the question isn’t so much “how to write the perfect novel” as it is “how to write my perfect novel.”

A line of encouragement from literary agent Scott Edelstein has informed my writing for years now. In his book, 100 Things Every Writer Needs to Know, he said “If you’re ever at a loss as to what to write about, ask yourself to imagine the one story, essay, poem, or book that you’d most like to read. Then write it.”

Too often, we allow ourselves to be inhibited by the expectations (real or imagined) of other people. What if the literati look down their noses because you write romance? What if the neighbors are scandalized because you write horror? What if secular readers scoff at your Christian elements? Such fretting can not only spiral into procrastination, it can also prevent us from writing our stories.

I have to write the stories God has given me. I understand and respect the great responsibility I have as an entertainer, but I also have to keep reminding myself that I can’t please everyone. As historian Studs Terkel put it, “Just about every book contains something that someone objects to.” Ultimately, all authors have to write primarily for themselves. If we can please just that one person, chances are we’ll be able to please a few others (maybe a whole lot of others) along the way.

So what is your perfect novel? That’s something nobody can say except you. Examine your favorite novels and movies for elements that particularly grabbed you. Battle scenes? Romance? Humorous dialogue? Plot twists? Sad endings? Happy endings? Chances are the story elements that are important to you are already showing up in your work. But if you can single them out on purpose and identify them, you can strengthen them and make them more intrinsic to your stories.

What about story devices toward which you're ambivalent? Maybe you just stuck that romantic subplot into your fantasy story because you felt that’s what readers would expect. But you’re not trying to write what readers expect, remember? Expected, often, is bad. So break the mold, go with your gut, follow your own inclinations. Don’t conform to standards simply for conformity’s sake. You’re not trying to be the next Dean Koontz; you trying to be the one and only you.

I admit it’s plenty difficult to drown out both the critics and the fans. With every person who reads my work and comments on it, I am forced to fight to keep their opinions from encroaching onto my own vision for my stories. Not, of course, that I don’t consider and deeply appreciate the guidance and thoughts of others (see “Putting Your Ego in Your Back Pocket”). But, ultimately, I have to make my own choices for my work, uninfluenced by others. I can’t sit hunched over my keyboard every day, poking out a word or two, and wondering if my readers will applaud or jeer.

Bestselling novelist Sloan Wilson said it perhaps as well as anyone: “A writer cannot choose his audience; he can only be himself and let his audience choose him.”

Don’t worry about what the world considers the perfect novel. Write your perfect novel, and let the world come to you.

You’re sitting there, brow knit in concentration, working very hard on a untangling a knotty story problem, when along comes a non-writing friend or family member.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asks.

“Working.” You give him barely a glance, your mind still lost in your make-believe world.

“Uh-huh,” says Mr. Friendly Non-Writer. “Working hard, no doubt?”

“Of course.”

“But you’re just sitting there.”

This is the point where you open your mouth to explain, only to close it again in a smile and give your head a little shake.

Most non-writers have a hard time fathoming that some of our most difficult work takes place when we appear to be least productive. Actually, this is a little gem of a realization that even some writers have yet to appreciate. Making use of so-called “downtime” can actually be one of the most productive tricks in a writer’s bag.

Chances are that when life calls your body away from your computer, your mind probably isn’t so quick to follow. As you work you way through your day—washing dishes, raking leaves, folding clothes—your hands may be busy with mundane necessities, but your mind may well be back in Neverland, trying to figure out how Peter can rescue those poor Lost Boys one more time. Likely, there are moments when you chafe at the boring tasks that steal your time from your writing. But what you may not have realized is that these boring tasks aren’t a waste of writing time at all.

Because downtime gives our brains a chance to relax and rejuvenate after intense bouts of hammering the keyboard, it can be a writer’s greatest defense against writer’s block. Our brains are like rubber bands: the farther we stretch them, the farther they fly. But if you stretch them too far for too long, they lose their snap. Downtime offers us the obvious benefit of keeping our brains from turning into limp rubber bands. That, in itself, is nothing to be taken for granted. But, used properly, downtime can also offer a productivity of its own.

Something about the familiar and mechanical rhythms of most day-to-day chores—such as mowing the lawn, scooping the walk, chopping vegetables for soup, making beds, etc.—creates a perfect atmosphere for letting your creative unconscious do its thing. Novelist Michael J. Vaughn calls this “creative lollygagging,” and he actually goes looking for mindless, repetitive tasks in order to both rest his brain and give his stories a chance to stew in the back of his mind.

In an article entitled “Creative Lollygagging” (Writer’s Digest, December 2006), he offers some tips:

The key to successful lollygagging is to do it creatively. So what makes lollygagging creative lollygagging? Let’s look at the basic elements. First, consider activity. We are not talking about sitting around on a couch. Just as a satellite dish needs electricity, you need some blood pumping into that brain. Next, consider low focus. The activity shouldn’t be so intense that you don’t have time to think (Grand Prix and ice hockey are out). Look for a mellow pursuit, surrounded by low-level distractions.

For years, I’ve been taking advantage of my lollygagging moments without even realizing that’s what I was doing. If I was weeding, then my characters were weeding right alongside me. If I was exercising, maybe my hero was running for dear life. And you’d be surprised how many rainy scenes have originated in the shower. Most of my best creative lollygagging takes place while I’m alone because I think best when I can talk to myself out loud (please, nobody phone the funny farm, ‘cuz I know you do it too).

Not until recently, however, did I really begin to understand and take advantage of my downtime. In particular, I cherish my after-supper walks to the mailbox. Since I write for two hours before supper, my story is always fresh in my mind, and I’m able to use my little jaunt down my (long) driveway to smooth out plot snarls and decide upon my course of action for the next day.

Instead of dreading your forced time away from your manuscript, start looking for opportunities to take advantage of your downtime. Who knows—you might enjoy it so much that you start manufacturing lollygagging exercises of your own.

“‘It is only half an hour’—‘it is only an afternoon’—‘it is only an evening’—people say to me over and over again—but they don’t know that it is impossible to command oneself sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes—or that the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day. These are the penalties paid for writing books. Whoever is devoted to an Art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it.”

—Charles Dickens (writing to Maria Beadnell Winter, a childhood sweetheart, who wished to make an appointment with him)

How is it, I’d like to know, that Dickens can get away with saying something like that, and I can’t? Well, he is Dickens, I suppose. As a famous and beloved author, he could get away with being concise and even slightly snarky. Or could it be the other way around—that he was a famous and beloved author because he wrote just such notes?

One of the greatest struggles (yes, add another one to the list) of the writer’s life is making time to write. For some reason or another, most non-writers have a hard time fathoming that writing must be approached with the same dedication, discipline, and time management of a regular job. Family members and friends are likely to give us hurt and dirty looks when we sequester ourselves behind closed doors for yet another evening/night/morning/week of typing away. Add to that unfortunate guilt our own tendencies to procrastinate, and our already overloaded schedules often seem to have no place at all for our writing.

But guess what? If you’re not writing, you’re not a writer. (Nope, sorry, staring out the kitchen window and daydreaming while you’re scrubbing dishes doesn’t count.) Anyone who has any intention of being taken seriously as an author has to first take himself seriously—and that means, first and foremost, making time to write.

You’ll note I didn’t title this post “Finding Time to Write.” I said “Making Time” for good reason. If you shove your writing onto the back of the shelf with the intention to getting around to it whenever a spare minute pops up, you’re likely to find an inch of dust gathered on top of your manuscript by the time you get back to it. Life will always get in the way.

You have to make time. You have to make your writing a priority. Don’t wait around for your family or your day job to slack off and provide the necessary schedule openings for you to grab an hour or two of writing every day. I will never forget a line of advice I was once read (although I have to admit I have forgotten who said it): Make time for your writing. If you don’t, nobody will.

In my own experience, scheduling writing time comes down to two hard and fast rules:

1) Be consistent. Make it a goal to write something six days a week. Set yourself a definite goal—either a word count or a time limit (word counts will make you more productive, but a time limit is often the only feasible option for busy schedules)—and stick to it every single day. Peter de Vries once commented, “I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.” The important thing at this stage isn’t the quality of what you write so much as that fact that you are writing. My own writing time runs from four o’clock in the afternoon to six o’clock five days a week.

2) Guard your chosen time zealously. I’ve been known to threaten interrupters with their choice of a machete or a flame thrower. Once I’m at my desk with my music turned up, I don’t stop for anything short of a natural disaster. I close the door, unplug my wireless card, and turn off the telephone. It’s taken years for family and friends to realize I don’t want to be interrupted during these two hours, and I’ll admit to having resorted to crankiness on an occasion or two. But it’s paid off. For the most part, I’m left in solitude. Instead of having someone derail my train of thought with the plea of a favor or a question that “will only take five minutes,” they’ve learned to hold off until I’ve emerged from my creative cell. Put your foot down, and eventually people will learn to respect your needs.

I’m blessed that my non-writing obligations are such that I can devote a relatively large chunk of time to my writing every day. Not everyone will be able to scrape together two free hours out of every day. (Although some will probably be able to find even more time than that.) Obviously, as important as your writing is, it isn’t the most important thing in your life. People and responsibilities do come first. But if you’re serious about your writing, you will have to make the time to write on a consistent and uninterrupted basis. Trust me, it’s worth whatever sacrifices you may have to make. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, then at least take Dickens’s.

For many of us, the problem isn’t that we have too few ideas, but rather that we’ll never live long enough to write the ideas we already have. Of course, that really isn’t a problem; it’s a tremendous blessing. And if a little blessing is good, a lot of blessing must be even better, right? If a little bit of inspiration has us soaring up near the ceiling, why not go whole hog and open yourself to inspiration in every possible way?

Ultimately, inspiration is an intensely personal experience, unrepeatable and often unresponsive to conscious prodding. You can’t force inspiration. It either happens or it doesn’t. You can’t sit yourself down at your desk, squeeze your eyes shut, and demand that inspiration appear in front of you complete with drumroll and a puff of smoke. Inspiration is a gift, and like all gifts it must be treated with gratitude and responsibility.

But none of this is to say that we can’t position ourselves in the path of inspiration. Instead of just waiting around for the muse to hit us in the head with a lightning bolt, we can ingrain in ourselves the habit of “opening” ourselves to inspiration.

So (as if you didn’t already have too many stories to write), here’s a handful of tips for composing an invitation that Madame Inspiration won’t be able to resist.

Pay Attention to the Details

Writing is the details. Without these little garnishes, most stories could easily be summed up in a sentence or two. (Don’t believe me? Check out Book-A-Minute Classics.) People read fiction because they want to experience life. They want to see the way the dust motes turn to gold in a shaft of sunlight, and they want to smell the delicate spray of an orange rind as it is peeled back.

In order to share all these minutiae with readers, we first have to notice them ourselves. But don’t just notice it; experience it. In the end, a story is about the little things as much, if not more so, than the grand scope of life and death. So pay attention to the color of the sky right before the sun dips below the horizon, notice the way the bass in a sound system thrums in the soles of your feet, absorb the smell of rain so deeply that you can describe it without even trying. Not only will paying attention to the details plump up your prose, who knows when you’ll stumble upon some inconsequential and heretofore unnoticed facet that will spur your next story.

Look Beyond the Cliché

Keep your eyes wide open for the unexpected. Look beyond the obvious in search of surprising juxtapositions. Broaden your horizons; start searching for esoteric and little-known nuggets. When you find yourself with an idea for a story that could easily turn into a familiar plotline, hang onto it for a bit and go in search of some unexpected ingredient you can throw into the mix. Say you want to tell a mystery story. Don’t just settle for a tale about a hard-boiled cop in an inner-city district. Dig deeper. What would be unexpected? What would be out of the ordinary? For me, a story isn’t ready to be written until I’ve been able to add at least two or three layers of juxtaposition.

Subconscious

Never underestimate your subconscious. When you’ve come to a snarl in your plot, don’t think too hard. You can only push your conscious brain so far. On more than one occasion, after I’ve backed myself and my characters into a seemingly insurmountable corner, I’ve sat at the keyboard for hours, racking my brain for an answer that just wouldn't come. But when I return to the problem the next day, after my subconscious has had a chance to mull over the matter for the night, the solution is practically staring me in the face.

When you come across an interesting snippet of an idea that you aren’t quite certain how to develop—toss it into your subconscious for a while. Sometimes ideas stew in the back of my mind for years before suddenly reappearing on center stage as something worth pursuing.

Conscious

Nobody says you always have to wait for inspiration to come to you. Put your conscious mind to work and brainstorm. Give yourself “idea deadlines” (e.g. I’m going to come up with a new story idea every day). Buy a book of journaling prompts (such as Jack Heffron’s The Writer’s Idea Book) or google the Web for one of the hundreds of websites that offers prompts. Schedule idea-hunting day trips and sally forth with notebook and pen in hand.

I will admit that most of my best ideas have not been the product of a conscious effort. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t benefited from brainstorming sessions. Even if I don’t walk away from every session with a viable idea, at least I’ve given the ol’ brain a good workout.

Don’t Wait for Inspiration

Finally, and most importantly, don’t wait for inspiration. We’d all like to take up permanent residence in that rarefied atmosphere where the “inspiration high” is a constant state of being. But, as all writers discover sooner or later, that high will inevitably run dry. If we allow our writing to dry up with it, we’ll never so much as finish a story, much less be read by anyone.

Inspiration is much more likely to strike when your mind is active. So even on the days when the mental well seems to have evaporated and blown away in clouds of steam, sit yourself down at your desk and keep writing. Inspiration, after all, is really a very small of the big picture.