Writing

The Part-Time Grind

/ J. Paul Cooper / 1 Comment

As a writer, it’s frustrating to see the same story ideas being recycled. You go to the theatre and so many of the posters advertise films that are either another installment of a popular franchise or a remake of a film made twenty or thirty years ago. It’s frustrating because you have so many story ideas that you want to share with the world; your imagination is unlimited, but the amount of time available to you is not.

If all writing involved was actually writing, the process wouldn’t be so complicated or time consuming, but a writer is essentially an entrepreneur. The writing process requires you to develop your ideas, create a product, submit that product to the marketplace, follow up on  submissions, and if they are rejected, find new markets for them.  So what do you do, if you have a job that takes up forty or more hours of your week?

First, you’re going to have to choose which project to make the main priority. At present I’m working on a science fiction novel. I have a couple of screenplay concepts I’d love to be working on as well, but if I don’t concentrate on the novel, I will never finish it.

Second, you have to commit to finishing the project. You have to decide that even if you only have a short time each day to write, you’re going to keep at it until it’s ready to submit to an editor or producer. Keep in mind that nothing you write will be perfect, so although it’s important to do your best, at some point you will have to submit the work and see what happens.

Third, don’t compare yourself to other writers. If you convince yourself you’re a lousy writer just because someone finishes a project faster than you, you’re likely to become discouraged and give up. That would be a shame, because the world needs to hear your unique voice and your circumstances will never be exactly the same as those of another writers.  It’s like the feeling you get when driving a used car and someone passes you  driving a brand new sports car. You feel jealous for a moment, until you realise he may be driving $100,000 of debt.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the best description of the writing process I’ve found is an address by Canadian science fiction writer, Robert J. Sawyer. If you look up his name on http://www.youtube.com you’ll find the videos listed as Robert J Sawyer-P1 of 3-OWC2010, Robert J Sawyer-P2 of 3-OWC2010, and Robert J Sawyer-P3 of 3-OWC2010. OWC stands for the Ontario Writers’ Conference and each video is about ten minutes.  I hope you’ll find time in your busy schedule to watch these three short videos. His website, http://www.sfwriter.com also has some great resources.

Keep writing, world needs to hear your unique voice. If you choose to use this essay, or quote from it, please remember to give me credit for my efforts.

Copyright © 2017 by J. Paul Cooper

 

 

God, The First Writer

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Note: When I use Him or His when referring to God, it’s to avoid using it. To the best of my understanding God is a spirit and therefore doesn’t have a gender. To be clear, I am referring to the God of the Bible, not some nondescript infinite spiritual being. Atheists don’t apologize for dismissing the concept of God, I don’t apologize for believing in God.

So God decides to write the Ten Commandments. One of the greatest challenges for writers is brevity, keeping your message succinct; a one page cover letter to an editor, a two sentence logline to pitch a movie concept to a director. God manages to write a moral code for the human race in ten brief directives.

Where does God write the Ten Commandments? On a mountainside, and He makes it perfectly clear no one, except His friend Moses is allowed on the mountain while He is writing. You can probably relate; you want to be able write undisturbed, preferably in a room with the door closed. So why would God invite Moses to join Him? Proof of authorship; Moses was a witness to the fact God was the author.

It’s a good thing that God considered Moses a friend, and that He accepts human emotions and frailties. On the way back down the mountainside the first time, Moses sees his people worshipping an idol, a golden calf, and breaks the first stone tablets.  God allows Moses to return to Mount Sinai and writes the Ten Commandments on a second set of stone tablets.

When Moses walks down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments a second time, his face glows to the point people are afraid to approach him. Why was that necessary? The problem was someone could have claimed that Moses thought up the Ten Commandments by himself, and they weren’t really God’s words.  His glowing face made a clear and undeniable statement: The Ten Commandments, Copyright God.

If you choose to quote from my blogs, please remember to give me credit. I can’t clear a mountain to write, but I do my best.

Copyright © 2017 by J. Paul Cooper

 

Writing Formats: The Keys To Your Potential

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Note: This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of Opal: The Canadian Magazine For Authors and Writers. http://www.opalpublishing.ca.

The potential of the creative mind is infinite.

As the setting sun dips below the horizon producing a red glow, one writer imagines two lovers walking along a beach holding hands. Another writer imagines the red glow of plasma engines on a starship, delivering the alien horde about the annihilate the human race. Both stories can have a happy ending.
With time and practice, anyone who applies themselves and is dedicated to their craft can develop a unique voice and become an excellent writer. Although your mind constantly overflows with creative ideas, there is one factor which can limit the opportunities available to you; the number of formats you are familiar with.
It isn’t an issue of lack of talent, it’s about how quickly you can respond to opportunities. If you see an announcement for a playwriting competition, and you have a great story idea, you can write the play while you’re learning the format, but it will take longer. It will be a much less stressful experience if you already understand the format for writing a play for live theatre.
Another good reason to experiment with various formats is that it may help you find which format you’re most comfortable working with. Several years ago I was writing a crime novel and now matter how many times I started, I always found myself stifled by writer’s block. I had recently read a couple of screenplays just out of curiosity, so I decided to write the story as a screenplay, to see how it would work out. A couple of months later I had a completed feature length screenplay and I discovered my favourite writing format. Since that time I’ve written several screenplays, submitting them to producers and directors. Screenwriter, poet, playwright; you can wear all those hats!
An excellent way to develop an understanding of different formats, discover how they relate to each other, and how they are adapted for movies, is to use the following process: Read the source material (if it’s an adaptation), read the screenplay, and then watch the movie. You can begin by searching your local library’s catalogue and find out which screenplays are available. Use “Motion Picture Plays” as the subject and “Screenplay,” as a keyword. Some books about making movies also contain complete screenplays or excerpts. If you search using a movie title, keep in mind that the source material’s title may not be the same as the movie title. The 1982 movie Blade Runner was based on Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
You can buy screenplays, but it’s better from a cost perspective to see if the library has the screenplays you want to read first. There are websites that allow you to read screenplays, but I can’t vouch for how safe they are. Your library will also have books on how to use the different formats. If you’re not sure if a movie is based on an original screenplay, visit http://www.imdb.com. On each movie’s webpage you’ll find the Writer(s) listed below the Director, including who wrote the screenplay, as well as the title and author of the source material, if it’s an adaptation.
The reason this process is such a useful learning tool is because of the wide variety of formats you’ll be exposed to. Arrival (2016) us based on the short story, ”Story of Your Life,” by Ted Chiang. A Few Good Men (1992) is based on a play by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie. All The President’s Men (1976) is based on the non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodword. Adaptations can also be based on magazine articles, an individual’s personal journal entries and poems.
Whether it’s based on an original screenplay or an adaptation, it’s fascinating to learn how the writers and directors, all storytellers, approach the same story.
Are you wondering why I said a story about aliens annihilating the human race could have a happy ending? An alien writer published her memoire of the invasion, The Day Humans Died. The memoire became an inter-galactic bestseller and she became filthy rich. In real the real world, the lawyers get all the money.

J. Paul Cooper

 

 

 

Are You a Writer?

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Every condition has symptoms. Here are some that may indicate you are a writer.

Everything around you makes you think of a storyline. You look at a ship in the harbour, and immediately wonder what it would be like if you were a customs officer inspecting a ship, and found a nuclear weapon.  You’re riding in the backseat of a friend’s car, and you wonder what if would be like if you were a wealthy entrepreneur being driven to meeting where you’d either become a billionaire, or lose the company you’d built from scratch. It never ends.

Once you have a story idea, you can’t relax until you start writing.  A story idea in a writer’s mind  is like a marble in a tin can, the irritating rattle won’t stop until you start writing. You probably have more story ideas than you can possibly work on at one time. One option is to write a brief outline of each idea and see where it leads; your intuition will guide you to the story idea that has the greatest potential. Just the process of recording story ideas and making a decision really helps.

You remember the names of characters better than the names of real people. If I meet someone today, there’s a very good chance I’ll almost immediately forget it, but I can remember the names of characters from stories I wrote years ago. It may be that when you’re writing, you repeat a character’s name over and over again in your head.  It’s also possible that you associate a character’s name with very strong emotions, because of what happens to a character in a story.

You find it extremely frustrating to watch writers accepting awards.  If you watch someone holding a winning lottery ticket, there’s no personal connection, it’s pure math; so many tickets were issued, someone had to win, it was that guy or girl. There was nothing the person standing before you could possibly do to improve the odds, other than spending a lot of money on tickets. It doesn’t indicate any talent or intelligence. The writer accepting an award, however has followed the same process as you; start with great story ideas, write, have your work rejected, keep writing, and repeat until you’re standing at the podium accepting the award.  (Why haven’t I won any awards? How about that weather…..)

I should warn you, if you are a Writer, the condition is permanent.

J. Paul Cooper

 

 

 

What Are Your Goals?

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Even if you love to drive, just for the sake of driving, you probably have a destination in mind before you start the engine of your vehicle. There’s a certain feeling of accomplishment,  safely completing a journey. If you don’t have a destination, then all you’re doing is driving around in circles, wasting gas. If you’ve never thought about what you want to achieve through writing, perhaps now is the time to consider this important issue. Here some questions to consider:

Do you want to be a professional writer or are you content to keep writing as a hobby? There’s no right or wrong answer to this question, because no one understands your life better than you do. Although my goal is to become a full-time, professional writer, at the moment leaving my job would be unfair to my family. That’s why I start and end each shift at the warehouse with the Writer’s Daily Affirmation that I wrote in the first blog entry, to remind myself that I’m a writer, not a forklift operator.

Are you willing to write for free to get started?  It’s often been said that the worst thing that can happen to a writer isn’t being criticized, it’s being forgotten. One reason to write for free, especially when you first start writing, is earn credits that you can list in your profile.  One important thing to remember, however, is that once a story, essay or article has been published, even on your own blog, it will much more difficult to get it published again. Some editors won’t even consider previously published material. If an article or short story has been published for free, you may never be paid for it.

Do you have one project that keeps working its way into your thoughts?  Great story ideas are like marbles in a tin can, they just keep rolling around in your mind, and the rattling won’t stop until you start writing.  The most important decision you can make is to actually start writing. You can read Writer’s Digest, watch author interviews on YouTube, visit author’s websites and read blogs about writing, but never actually sit down and write. If your intuition it telling you it’s a great story idea, it’s time to start writing.

Have you ever written your goals down? Take a few minutes to write down the goals you want to achieve through writing and record dates by which you plan to achieve those goals. You don’t have to worry about whether you can finish the projects before the self-imposed deadlines, their purpose is to help you focus and avoid procrastination. The main thing is that you’re moving towards your goals.

During the first week of July I had one editor reject a short story I had submitted, and another editor publish an article I wrote. While I’m waiting to hear from several film companies I submitted screenplays to, my eBook, What If? A Collection of Short Fiction by J. Paul Cooper has been added by several libraries. Writing really is an emotional rollercoaster.

J. Paul Cooper

 

 

 

Stay Flexible

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With so many demands on your time, it’s easy to push your dream of becoming a published writer to the end of the list and place it in the “someday I’ll” file. Here are a couple of suggestions to help you achieve your writing ambitions.

Since the most important goal is to keep writing, consider working on two projects; a longer project like a novel or feature length screenplay and a shorter project like a short story or an essay. If you feel overwhelmed by the longer project, take a break and work on the smaller project. Finishing the shorter project will give you a feeling of accomplishment, and you’ll be ready to tackle the literary behemoth again.

I’m working on a science fiction novel, but I recently took a break to write an article, “Formats: The Keys to Your Potential,” which was published in the July 2017 issue of Opal: A Magazine For Canadian Authors and Writers.

Set deadlines for your work to help you keep focused, but accept the fact that you’ll have to adapt to changes in your life. Write down what you’re writing goals are and decide when you plan to achieve them, but if you reach that deadline and you’re not finished, don’t be too hard on yourself.  If you start thinking of  yourself as a loser because you’ve missed a self-imposed deadline, it’s only going to destroy your self-confidence. You are not a loser, you’re a normal human being dealing with life. You can always set a new deadline and start writing again.

You may not have thought about it this way, but if you’re a writer, reading is like learning from the masters. Even though you aren’t doing it intentionally, you’re absorbing writing techniques as you turn the pages. Even if it’s extremely difficult to find time to write, if you’re reading, you’re still learning and making progress. You can’t read while you’re driving to work, but you can listen to books on CDs.

Learning to write is a lifelong process, so you don’t have to become discouraged by unexpected delays. If life prevents you from writing for a while, you won’t forget how to write; you are still a talented, intelligent individual prepared to share your unique voice with the world.

J. Paul Cooper

 

Hollywood @ Your Library

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Hollywood is what dreams are made of, that hasn’t changed since the very first feature films were made. Why not use that dream to encourage more people to visit your library? Hollywood @ Your Library would be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to children that reading and writing is how dreams becoming reality on the big screen.

WRITING FOR HOLLWOOD would be set up on the display table at the library entrance. To make it easy for children to understand how the writing process flows, place material left to right: the source material, the screenplay and the DVD/Blu-ray cases. An example would be the Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) screenplay and the movie case. The English Patient (1996) display would include the novel, the screenplay and the movie case. To demonstrate the variety of material used, you could also include All the President’s Men (1976)  for adaptation of a non-fiction book and A Few Good Men (1992) as an adaptation of a play for live theatre.  You might need a separate table for books on writing screenplays by authors like John Truby, Robert McKee and Linda Seger.

Note: Since not all libraries have a large selection of screenplays, this problem could be solved with some coordination between libraries and inter-library loans. If Town A had their Hollywood At The Library on July 15th and Town B had their event on August 5th, that would allow enough time for the materials to transfer between libraries. Although it’s not the only source, the Newmarket Press Shooting Script Series has a wide selection of screenplays.

THE HOLLYWOOD EXPERIENCE is an opportunity for local filmmakers to discuss what is involved in making a movie. The library would set up a schedule when individuals with various skill sets could talk about the roles they’ve played in making films. Keep it short, perhaps 20 minutes per speaker, so there is always a fresh face at the microphone. If there aren’t any filmmakers living in your community, another option would be to invite people who have been Movie Extras/Background Performers to speak about their experience on a movie set.

READ THE LINES Audience members would be invited to read several lines from a movie script. Once the readings are finished, show the movie. The Truman Show (1998) doesn’t include nudity or extreme violence, but it would be up to librarians to use discretion in choosing the screenplay to use. Librarians always seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place; protecting freedom of expression, while trying to respect community standards

THE HOLLYWOOD FUN QUIZ is an activity for members of all ages, so it’s important to include questions that are easy for children to answer and some more challenging questions for adults as well. One of the best sources for the quiz would be the Internet Movie Data Base: http://www.imdb.com.

Soundtrack Clips: Titanic (1997), Frozen (2013)

Adaptation or Original Screenplay: Avatar (2009)/Original,  Arrival (2016)/Adaptation

Who is speaking?: Show the image of a well known character, such as Donkey from Shrek (2001), and have the audience guess who did the voiceover – Eddie Murphy

What Year?: Star Wars (1977), Cars (2006)

I hope that librarians will enjoy reading this blog and find it helpful.  I’ve been writing screenplays for about fifteen years, and it all started when I picked a screenplay off a library bookshelf, just out of curiosity.

J. Paul Cooper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Favourite Resources

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If I was to recommend one video to writers at any stage of their writing careers,  it would be a speech delivered at the 2010 Ontario Writer’s Conference by Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. The speech can be found on http://www.youtube.com in three parts and it takes about a half-hour to watch. It’s also useful to visit his website, http://www.sfwriter.com as an example of how you can build a successful writing career.

A website which I visit at the beginning of every month is http://www.placesforwriters.com. Many of the listing are for literary journals inviting writers to submit short stories. Writing and submitting short stories is a good way to begin the process of establishing yourself as a writer and I’ve submitted several short stories to journals listed on the website.

The BBC Writersroom http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom has it all. The website content includes interviews with screenwriters, articles on how to improve your writing, scripts for radio and television that you can read, and a listing of opportunities for writers. Make sure you pay attention to submission criteria in the Opportunities section, because sometimes only  writers living in the United Kingdom are qualified to participate. There are, however, open calls for international writers as well

I often visit the website for Overdrive http://www.overdrive.com, which supplies eBooks to libraries in several countries. The website allows me to check the progress of my eBook, What If? A Collection of Short Fiction by J. Paul Cooper. I enter the title in the search box, and then in the section Find In A Library, I type “Canada” or “United States.” The results list the libraries where it’s available, and whether or not it’s being borrowed. If you’d like to check where a print book is available, you can use http://www.worldcat.org.

When you’re watching the credits scroll at the end of a Hollywood movie, you’ll often see the symbol for the Writers Guild of America. If you’re curious about how screenwriters join the union and how much members earn, visit http://www.wga.org. Many countries have similar organizations representing screenwriters; in Canada, it’s the Writers Guild of Canada http://www.wgc.ca. Keep in mind that a screenwriter’s earning potential, whether or not she belong to a union, is also influenced by how much her work is in demand, and how good her agent’s negotiating skills are.

I hope that this week you write, because the world needs your voice, your passion.

 

 

Writer’s Block – A Creative Solution

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A some point along your literary journey it’s going to feel like you’ve hit a wall, that you’ve run out of ideas, that your writing career is over. Before you panic, it’s important to avoid negative self-talk. You are not an idiot. You have not forgotten how to write.

Imagine you’re on a long hike up a mountainside. After you’ve been walking for a couple of hours you arrive at a place on the trail where there’s been a landslide It’s blocked by debris. You’re intelligent and you have enough strength to continue, so it’s not a matter of whether you are capable of finishing the journey. The issue is how important it is for  you to reach your final destination,  and whether you have the patience to pause and consider all your options.

Staring at a blank page or computer screen is about as helpful as staring at a pile of rocks blocking a mountain trail, and being overwhelmed by how impossible the situation seems.  My suggestion is that you continue writing, which will keep your creative juices flowing, but switch to a different format. If’ you’re writing a novel, take some time to write an essay. If you’re working on a non-fiction book, write a short story. If your main project is a play for live theatre, write an article for a newsletter, magazine or online literary journal.

The reason it’s important to switch your attention from the main project for a brief time, is to allow your self-conscious to search  for a solution, rather than focusing all your attention on the problem.  It’s time to relax,  not panic. Consider the world we live in; there are only seven notes, but they are used to compose symphonies, there are only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, and yet every day new books are published.  That is the limitless potential of the creative mind.

Developing self-confidence as a writer begins with finishing projects, but you don’t have to feel like a failure if you encounter writer’s block. Your God given talent, and the endless flow of creative juices will allow you to find a solution. You will succeed.

Marketing Your Writing

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How do you get your book or eBook noticed, when self-published books and eBooks are flooding the literary marketplace like a biblical plague of locusts? I self-published an eBook, What If? A Collection of Short Fiction by J. Paul Cooper (ISBN: 9781311893451) through http://www.smashwords.com in May 2016.  Here are some of the marketing ideas I’ve used.

Submit an announcement about your book to alumni organizations. Although people are often referring to universities and colleges when they mention alumni associations, schools at all levels have websites dedicated to their former students. If  your post is sent to the former students of your graduating year, it might reach hundreds of potential readers. If your announcement is sent to everyone subscribing to the alumni newsletter, it could be in the thousands. Do an online search for every school you’ve attended and find out how you can make an announcement through their websites and newsletters.

Send an e-mail message to libraries.  As a result of sending over two hundred  e-mails, my eBook is available through Overdrive on eleven library websites:

Canada: Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Surrey, Saskatchewan Library Consortium

United States: Los Angeles, Buffalo, Nashville, Lexington,  Hillsborough County and Durham County.

You’ll have to decide whether or not it’s worth the effort. Even though I copy and paste the message, it’s still a tedious, time-consuming process.

Subscribe to Winning Writers. http://www.winningwriters.com. They occasionally send out a list of subscriber accomplishments, but you have contact Winning Writers and let them know about your book or eBook.

Send e-mails to radio shows. In 2001 I had a Young Readers’ Novel published, Fluffy: A Cat’s Tale. I contacted an American radio show and told them about my book.  As a result, my book was mentioned on a nationally syndicated radio program listened to by thousands in Canada and the United States.

Start a blog. If you decide to start a blog it’s going to require commitment, but if you’re willing to write consistently, it’s a great place to announce all your successes.

Open Mic Opportunities.  Public readings are an excellent way to raise your profile and promote you book or eBook. Pubic reading opportunities can be found through libraries, independent book stores and writing organizations.

If you’re writing a book, keep notes of marketing ideas that come to you while you’re still working on the project. It’s encouraging to know you have a plan for the next phase in the process.

J. Paul Cooper