Tina Haapala, Excuse Editor

Before my recent memoir writing course , I hadn’t heard of the term “the muddy middle,” but I had sure felt it. Some of my work is still there, trudging along in the muck like those quick-sand “walkers” in last week’s episode of the Walking Dead   And like the zombies, you can’t just ignore the problem and hope it will go away, you have to figure out how to move on. And for this you need the ABC’s of Muddy Middle Elimination: A. Action . No matter how stuck you feel, the only way you are ever going to get any forward momentum in your work is to MOVE. Step away from the computer and take a walk to clear your mind, or turn away from the monitor and free write for 5-10 minutes, about the frustration, or how you may want to write the next scene but are afraid to commit to it, whatever. But stick to the action of writing, even if you take a few moments to move away from it, be sure to make your way back. B. B elieve . I get in those moods to cook unique things from magazines...

Recently, I had the opportunity to “get away from it all” and participate in a casual writer’s retreat.  A month or so ago, a few members of my writers group decided it would be a great idea to pick a weekend to head out of town and into the mountains so we could write, write, write!  Most people thought that was a fantastic idea and were all in; after all, isn’t that what we dream of, just some time where we are free from the distractions that are keeping us from achieving our writing goals? However, by the time we were signed up and ready to go, only 3 of us made the trip. Those distractions? Those are called life.  I am just grateful that I was able to rearrange my life in order to go, and I hope the others in my group will be able to make it another time (because there WILL be another time), or they will be able to use the lessons I learned from the retreat in their everyday writing lives. So, whether you are heading to a cabin in the woods, or sneaking in a f...

Today was like any other day; I had to be certain places at certain times. I had appointments.  I rearranged the other tasks in the day to fit in the scheduled events.  No problem, this is life. We take the time we have in our day to do what needs to be done.   In the past month, I’ve had to take about 6 hours out of my week for physical therapy on my knee.  Of course, taking 2 hours out of my day 3 times a week was not in my “normal” routine, but once I marked it on my calendar, I found ways to make it fit.  The therapy sessions were allotted for the whole four weeks, and if I needed to make a change (which I did, a few times), I had to let them know ahead of time, so that they could also shift their own schedules around.  When we are trying to “find time” to write, it somehow does not appear. We fill our time with other tasks, rushing around, staying busy (or staying lazy, but with justification at the ready—tired, burned out, etc.), only...

Karl Binder / FreeDigitalPhotos.net While watching an episode of CSI one night, I realized that this kind of storytelling entails using many more elements than you would think. After all, watching TV is a place where you just kind of zone out and have the story thrust upon you, right? All of the hard work needs to be done prior to hitting your cable box, so you don't have to work at all. For example, in this particular scene, the investigators were preparing to 'do their thing' with a car--the plan was to take it apart in order to find evidence. If I would have hit 'mute' right at that time, I would not have felt the gravity of the situation. Without the music, the dialogue, the familiar characters, and the sound effects (you know, as the camera zoomed in at the crucial piece of fuzz stuck on the steering wheel), this scene would have been nothing more than some dude walking around a car with a flashlight. Even if you are not writing a screenplay, you st...

I have a fan in my home office. It seems to be working ok now, but what if I flicked the switch and it stayed immobile? Or it started making a noisy racket every time I turned it on? I have a few choices for either of these scenarios. If it didn't rotate when I wanted it to, I could suffer with a stuffy office. Or I could go blow some money on a back-up floor fan. If it was noisy, I could try to distract myself with a different noise, or I could, again, suffer with a stuffy office. Or I could troubleshoot--and FIX the problem. If I wasn't sure what to do to cure my fan, I could dig up the manual and flip to the section called, curiously enough, "Troubleshooting." There's not one simple manual to keep your writing in working order. But one thing is for sure, it takes constant maintenance, because without attention, the problems start to swell. Any quick fixes begin to pile up, creating patches that disguise the evidence that you are an active writer. Is it tim...

Beating Screenwriter’s Block by Ginger Earle http://www.whythisisgood.com/ Screenwriters, like all writers, are often plagued with fear of the blank page, or writer’s block. Advice for beating writer’s block is often to just do it in spite of a lack of inspiration, or fear of writing the wrong thing. This is good advice, however there are some specific techniques that screenwriters can use to beat our own particular form of writer’s block. Writers of all genres can use these ideas to complete their stories and stop making excuses. Some writers detest the idea of structural rules and outlines because they find them limiting and stifling. They like to approach writing as a purely creative art form, where ideas and words flow freely and magically form a coherent story. But this desire for freedom is often what leads to the second-act morass that screenwriters are all too familiar with. You envision how the story begins, who the characters are, and maybe even have an ending in mind....