How to Stay the Course

 By J.T. Ellison

 

Only six years ago, I was a debut author. I remember the joy, the excitement, the sheer, unadulterated fear like it was yesterday. Now, with 13 books under my belt, I recognize how important it is to treasure the journey. Every moment of your writing career is precious – the good, and the bad. It’s what makes us better people, and stronger, happier, more capable writers.

You must treasure the journey to keep yourself on course to a long successful writing career.

Trust me, I know how easy it is to stray. I had it good way back when – I wrote in a vacuum, with only my own voice to derail me. Now there are so many negative, distracting voices clamoring for our attention -- Facebook, with its siren’s call. Goodreads and Amazon, where you can read your reviews and self-congratulate or self-flagellate at will. Twitter, where you can compare your number of followers and retweets and pithy witticisms with the masses. Blogs are a dime a dozen, and Instagram and Pinterest are a massive time suck.

And then there’s the doubly whammy of family and friends who can, with a well-placed, well-meaning word, create train wrecks of such magnificent proportion they’re hard to walk away from.

It’s all sound and fury signifying nothing. As such, you must find a way to retreat from the distractions, and chart your own course, so you can churn out books like kittens.

The Internet is your number one enemy. Whether you use apps to keep you away (Freedom, Self-Control) or you have the discipline of a general, you have to stay off the Internet. You have to live your life. See and feel and touch and taste. You must hear dialogue, not read it. You must experience all the world can offer – even if it’s taking a break to walk outside. Live, and your prose will be richer, your spirit more content. The only true satisfaction in the writer’s life in knowing it’s well lived.

Learn how to say no. No is your best friend. It is so tempting to agree to everything – guest blogging and touring and conferences and teaching engagements. They stroke the ego, and make us feel important and strong. And some of that is fine. Learn what fills your well socially, and stick to it. Half of us are introverts and half are extroverts. If going to a conference drains you, don’t do it. If it fires you up and you come home raring to tackle that manuscript, do. It’s that simple.

Lastly, respect your work. Respect your time. Get in a habit – find the best time for you to write and just do it already. You’ve already written one book. I know it can be scary tackling another. But here’s
a little secret: every book feels that way, whether it’s your 2^nd or your 14^th.  It gets worse, not better. All you can do is march those words onto the blank page, one by one, soldiers in your on-going war against writing entropy. Do that, every day, and believe in your work wholeheartedly, and I promise, success will follow.

BIO:

 
J.T. Ellison is the bestselling author of ten critically acclaimed novels, including Edge of Black and A Deeper Darkness, and her work has been published in over twenty countries. 

Her novel The Cold Room won the ITW Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original and Where All The Dead Lie was a RITA® Nominee for Best Romantic Suspense. She lives in Nashville with her husband. Visit JTEllison.com for more insight into her wicked imagination, or follow her on Twitter @Thrillerchick.

THE FINAL CUT

New Scotland Yard’s chief inspector Nicholas Drummond is on the first flight to New York when he learns his colleague, Elaine York, the “minder” of the Crown Jewels for the “Jewel of the Lion” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was found murdered. Then the centerpiece of the exhibit, the infamous Koh-i-Noor Diamond, is stolen from the Queen Mother’s crown. Drummond, American-born but raised in the UK, is a dark, dangerous, fast-rising star in the Yard who never backs down. And this case is no exception. 

Special Agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich from Coulter’s bestselling FBI series don’t hesitate to help Drummond find the cunning international thief known as the Fox. Nonstop action and high stakes intensify as the chase gets deadly. The Fox will stop at nothing to deliver the Koh-i-Noor to the man who believes in its deadly prophecy.  Nicholas Drummond, along with his partner, FBI Special Agent Mike Caine, lay it on the line to retrieve the diamond for Queen and country.

Priming Your Brainstorm

By Katherine Ramsland

You know the feeling: You’re at an impasse with a character or plot point and you can’t seem to dissolve it. You’re frustrated, perhaps desperate. It’s going nowhere, but you’re on a deadline. You’ve run out of ways to spur your muse.

Consider this: Don’t work so hard. The less you push, the better your chances of getting what you need. Your brain actually requires some space to do its best work.

Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov realized this. Whenever he experienced writer’s block, he knew it was useless to force the issue. So, he’d go to a movie. He let his subconscious process the material in its own way. Once he returned, he invariably had new ideas. (I’ve tried this, and it works.) 

Many writers, inventors, scientists, and artists have discovered the same thing. The solution arrives – aha! – seemingly from nowhere. But these moments seem so random, as of those people just got lucky.

The truth is that you – any of you – can harness your resources to produce them. According to recent neuroscience research, with a little work you can prime your brain for “aha! moments.” You can also provoke them on a regular basis. They’re a direct result of balancing work and play. 

I call them “snaps,” because the flash of genius that really counts is more than just a shift of consciousness or new perspective. Snaps contain the trigger for momentum—they break through the impasse and snap us into action to switch strategy. So, first, you left brain work: do your research. Be diverse. Gather lots of different types of data, including items unrelated to your project. This “idea stew” forms your knowledge base.

Then, read through the material on which you’re blocked, pull away, and go do something fun. Relaxing your left brain releases your eager right brain to reshape the data you’ve stored into unique new patterns. When you least expect it, an idea will pop. 

Consider these examples: 

·

*Jonas Salk was working on a cure for polio in a dark basement in Pittsburgh. He failed time and again, so he went to Italy to wander through a monastery. There, he experienced a rush of ideas, including the one for the polio vaccine.

*Friedrich Nietzsche was out for a walk in the mountains when his famous Zarathustra tale tumbled forth.

*Martin Cooper was watching Star Trek when he first envisioned the cell phone.

*J. K. Rowling was on a stalled train when she snapped on a child wizard. “I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed) hours,” she said, “and all the details bubbled up in my brain.” 

So, walk, juggle, take a nap, or take a shower: do something that eases the left brain’s cognitive load. Give it the break it needs to stir up your idea stew and find a delightful aha! insight.

Bio for Katherine Ramsland 

I have been writing for over two decades, in several formats and genres. I started with an academic book about a philosopher, but then I wrote commercial biographies of Anne Rice and Dean Koontz. Shortly thereafter, I got involved in immersion journalism and penned a book about my exploration of the vampire subculture, followed by one on ghost hunters and another about people in the death business. At this time I was teaching philosophy at Rutgers University, but I left to get another grad degree in forensic psychology, which changed the focus of my writing entirely. I now teach psychology at DeSales University and have extensive experience in researching and writing about criminal psychology and forensic science.  

I have published more than 1,000 articles and 47 books, including Psychopath, The Ivy League Killer, The Vampire Trap, The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers and Inside the Minds of Sexual Predators. Additionally, I have published two vampire thrillers, The Heat Seekers and The Blood Hunters. My latest books are Blood and Ghosts and Snap! Seizing Your Aha! Moments. 

I train homicide officers, attorneys, and coroners, and speak internationally about forensic psychology, forensic science, serial murder, and narrative nonfiction. I have appeared on numerous documentaries, as well as on such programs as The Today Show, 20/20, 48 Hours, Larry King Live and E! True Hollywood Story. I was also the recurring expert on the ID network for Born to Kill and the American Occult series, and I’ve consulted for CSI and Bones. I have a blog on the Psychology Today site called Shadow Boxing, and my forthcoming e-book this summer is The Sex Beast.

Connect with Katherine:  

Website

Blog

FaceBook

Twitter

Book description: 

Snap! Seizing Your Aha! Moments

Sudden flashes of inspiration have triggered many discoveries and inventions throughout history. Are such Aha! moments merely random or is there a way to train the brain to harness these seemingly unpredictable creative insights? In this fascinating overview of the latest neuroscience findings on spontaneous thought processes or “snaps,” Dr. Katherine Ramsland describes how everyone can learn to improve the chances of achieving their own Eureka! moments by adopting certain attitudes and habits. Snaps are much more than new ideas. Snaps are insights plus momentum—they instantly snap us toward action. They often occur after ordinary problem solving hits an impasse. We may feel stuck, but while we’re in a quandary, the brain is rebooting. Then, when we least expect it, the solution pops into our heads.

Ramsland describes the results of numerous scientific experiments studying this phenomenon. She also recounts intriguing stories of people of all ages and from diverse disciplines who have had a snap experience. Both the research and the stories illustrate that it’s possible to enhance our facility for snap moments by training ourselves to scan, sift, and solve. SNAP teaches us how to cultivate our own inner epiphanies to gain an edge in business, career paths, and even our personal lives. 

Praise: 

“This is a fascinating exploration of the mind when it's in hyperdrive, as illuminating as it is fun to read.” – Dean Koontz 

“In this entertaining and thought-provoking study, Ramsland explores the phenomenon of sudden insight—‘a dramatic brilliance that floods the mind and clicks into place’--which she calls the ‘snap.’” – PW

“You may reach the end…and think, ‘Aha! I feel smarter than I did before I read this book.’”– Deborah Blum