Writing Tools: Bribery

I’ve found I work better with carrots than sticks.

When I’m writing and feeling my way through a manuscript, sometimes it seems like there’s no end in sight. Even though I know that like a runner in a marathon, I just have to keep moving forward, putting one foot down and then the other, when I’m in the middle of a book it’s easy for me to lose motivation.

Maybe I should clean those cupboards out instead, I think. (In fact it’s fairly safe, if you should find me cleaning anything, to just assume I’m in the dreaded middle of a book). Or, Maybe I should set this book aside and start a different one. I’ve been in this game long enough now that I never fall for that one, but that doesn’t make it any easier to face those empty pages.

Nagging doesn’t work. I have a lot of people who remind me that I should be writing, but the more they tell me that, the less I feel like doing it.

What does help, as I’ve learned in these past twenty-something years of writing novels, is to promise myself little treats for every milestone reached.

When I’ve hit fifty thousand words, say, I can buy myself that Shiny Thing on eBay I’ve been coveting.

Or, when I’ve finished this next section, I can have chocolate (or maybe a Jacobite Ale).

I once got myself through a whole novel using a DVD boxed set of Scarecrow and Mrs. King—each time I finished a chapter, I watched one more episode.

Carrots, not sticks.

For the novel I’m working on now I’m so close to my deadline the writing is almost continual, and that makes setting the milestones trickier, but I still set them. (The cookies, above, were my treat for completing a difficult scene).

But the carrot, by this stage of every book, is always bigger and better than any reward—it’s the new, bright idea that’s starting to shape itself into the next novel, beckoning just out of reach, that will carry me through to the end of this current one.

That’s my reward for the end of a book, really: Getting to start the whole process again with the words, “Chapter One”.
 
What helps you get things done? Do you have any tricks of your own, when you need motivation?

Comments

[Janga]

I am a firm believer in the carrots approach. I taught freshman and advanced composition classes for many years, and carrots in the form of chapters in books I was eager to read kept me plugging away at grading those essays. For every ten essays completed with comments and a letter grade, I rewarded myself with three chapters in a book from the top of my TBR stack. It worked wonderfully. I still use the reward system with my freelance writing, especially when I'm writing on a subject that holds little interest for me. For every five hundred words on the project, I get to read a chapter. But these days I am reading on my Kindle, and somehow that makes it easier to cheat and read an extra chapter or two before my conscience sends me back to write another five hundred words on traffic circles or sociological cosmopolitanism.

[Mary T]

When I do housework (something I've always hated) I promise myself a chapter or two or a puzzle after each room is completed. Back when I was working overtime I would motivate myself by thinking of a new pair of boots I would buy with the overtime pay.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Sadly, sticks work better with me. A pity about that!

[Sue McCormick]

I am a carrot user. Back in my copy-editing days, when deadlines caused 18-hour work days, a coke, a cookie, a 10-minute, 1-chapter break, etc. would refresh me so I could face the next lot of galleries. (Or rewriting the author, in the author's own words in order to make the pagination work!)

And less you shudder about that, this rewriting technique is more important in textbooks than in fiction. And while not easy, it is also easier in exposition. In exposition, you can cut a term out of that list at the start, without wreaking mood; I would fear to do that in fiction.

[Anne Gracie]

Oh Susanna and Janga, I hear you on the bribery, but there is no way I can put a good book down after three chapters. I cheat all the time. *g* So the real treat for me is the whole book. And when I finish this book (I'm on deadline too) I'll have a brand new MJP book to read.

Susanna, all the very best with finishing this book. Can't wait to read it.

[Anne Gracie]

Not so much sticks for me, Mary Jo, but the looming aspect of shame and embarrassment. *g*

[Mary Jo Putney]

Anne Gracie, shame and embarrassment ARE sticks!

[Quantum]

Dear me. Y'all make writing sound like hard work. And I always thought that those stories just poured out effortlessly!

As a research scientist I generally found that artificial sticks and carrots, other than strong coffee to keep me awake, were unnecessary.

When scientific research reaches the stage of writing up the work for publication, the hard work has been done and most scientists are eager to see their work in print, partly to ensure that they get the credit for being first. The writing is the icing on the cake and is often completed very quickly in a race to be first to publish. It is in itself a carrot. Occasional rejection during peer review can be an unpleasant stick, which I usually resented, though with hindsight it did motivate further work and improved presentation of results.

I sometimes wish that I could invent experimental results that perfectly fitted my theories, but that would make it fiction and no doubt carrots and sticks would start to play a role. LOL

[Andrea Penrose]

Yes, definitely a carrot person here too. Though the carrots have to have chocolate as part of the! (Pass the cookies, Susanna!)

Or books. I also reward myself with "if I finish this chapter, I can read the book I'm loving far more than my own!

[Andrea Penrose]

Writing easy? Ha!

Interesting point about being eager to get the research on paper. I can see that . . . and in some ways not having to make up plot and characters does take some variables out of the equation.

But that said, writing, whether fiction or non-fiction—IS hard work. Language, structure, pacing, style—to do it well is no easy feat.

[Quantum]

Andrea, I'm probably sticking my head above the parapet here, never having completed a novel, but if I might play devil's advocate, I think that some people write as though they were in a conversation. With a clear mental image of a scene and the characters, they proceed to describe what is in their mind, and the words just flow.

I have never read Barbara Cartland so can't express an opinion on quality but to quote from the web
https://za.pinterest.com/pin/95349717083931144/

Barbara Cartland's method for writing stories was not by hand, but instead dictated to a secretary at Camfield Place, completing on average one book a fortnight"

I think the books were quite popular so we have an existence theorem on writing romances quickly!

OK you can shoot me!

[Andrea Penrose]

Quantum, I know that there are authors who write the way you describe. The words just flow . . . and flow.

They are as incomprehensible to me as quantum physics! I can no more explain their abilities than I can the Uncertainty Principle or particles being able to exist in two places at the same moment.

[Sue McCormick]

Yes, there are authors who have written like that. But the ones that I have met during 49 years of attending Science Fiction conventions mostly do not. Harland Ellison seems to have been an exception, but most of the ones I have met and talked to spoke of writing in the manner as the Word Wenches.

And by the way, in my opinion, Barbara Cartland may have written many, many books; but were they good books? In my opinion, no! Cardboard characters, dull plots. Nothing to remember from any of them.