Motivation/Discipline is not something that’s created by doing something, it’s created by doing a thing over and over. It’s like if you bake a hundred loaves of bread, trying to make each one good, very good, slight variations—-all that effort creates discipline and motivation.
Much to the same with writing.
The way I break the mundanity (and not the creativity but sometimes the design ,the effort, the storyline can hit a snag and start feeling mundane) is I stop.
I work on multiple projects. Then like a river, rushing in another direction, I’ll suddenly spring into a project that I left at a point with some of that thrust.
You can look up Kyle Phoenix Fan Fic and find an X-Men opus—-abut 20 chapters, several hundred pages—-I’ve printed out a mock copy (can’t print out for reals because of copyright laws) but that story I literally work out my writing jones, ideas, characters, how to write certain kinds of scenes, odd ideas that go nowhere, work that I have no “place for in my other projects, silly ideas.
So I use X-Men minor characters that aren’t big in the comics because then they’re a little fresh to me, to be creative with.
Right now I’m working on two novels, which I should have in Final Drafts by the end of the year—-Free and Mbube Mbube.
Free I constructed to 10 chapters so that was easier to dive in and out and write pieces/a chapter at a time. I recently found a picture online of a mother standing between her son and an army officer/police officer—-and that got me into Chapter 10 where a mother steps between her son and his father, who is intent on killing him. Though the picture was debunked, it resonates enough to motivate.
Experimentation/Motivation
I’m often trying something new out, in fact, an idea doesn’t graduate to the level of being worth typing up, handwriting, unless it’s got an original hook to it somewhere. Free came about as a recurring theme I was hearing in workshops over the years, and my own experience with Black/Latino men trying to kill their sons. I got to thinking on it and what would twist a father to hunt his son? Each chapter, 10, are then slow unveilings of what brings Dominic to the point of hunting his son. The crimes, the manipulations, the history. My thought was that in the beginning it is an insane act, but by the end could I make it make sense?
Mbube Mbube is my first deep foray into writing a horror novel—-I had a dream about it and typed it into the internet and discovered it’s an African children’s game. So now I have to design a plot around this. I thought I would keep it centered with African children and an African nation and a plane crash. But what really happened to the students? Did the plane really crash?
Then I’m working on a trilogy, Race War, that I’ve been thinking on for years and I literally needed a biological weapon so I’m skimming through bio-weapons on the internet and I came across a health oddity, pointedly in some Africans. I literally had the “prize” in Mbube Mbube in my Race War research.
So now I know that the end of Mbube Mbube is where the agents in Race War discover this perverted bio-research and that gives me my bio-weapon for Race War.
Again each of the above is an experimentation—-I’ve written dramas and such before, even trying my hand at a sci-fi novel S (available on Amazon) but I’ve yet to do horror, speculative race based scifi.
Hush and Stay With Me, both published and available on Amazon—-were forays into speculative fiction/fantasy.
Tranny (published) and Free are sort of hardcore forays into heavy drama, sort of culminating into a novel, in bits and pieces called Street Life (I have about 20+ pages handwritten); then there’s Sanction, a thriller where a small town in systematically wiped out by soldiers one weekend—-the point of why, possibly answered in multiple ways.
Court of Conscience (80% finished) is first a trilogy that will have 3 more trilogies—-a legal drama/thriller.
Then I had another dream of an entire novel about a teenage boy in some godforsaken country who has to flee his country Where The Walker and The Path Meet. I know he makes it to Starbucks at the end. lol.
Then I had another dream this past week for two more novels—-one I got down—-A Nook, The Twit and a House In Virginia about three outcasts in college—-I might go straight drama with it or heavy fantasy, I’m not sure.
The second novel was about Greek Gods in modern day which might flow into Myriad, a 12 book series I’ve written a few hundred pages of but spotlighted a chapter in the ending of Stay With Me. (I have this insane idea of creating like a spider web of characters, places throughout several books so that it can be linked “series”.)
That’s just the fiction I’m working on for the next years or so. There’s a good dozen more of non-fiction.
What helps with discipline-motivation I find is a robust catalogue of experimentations, challenges and ideas segmented to various projects. It literally always gives me somewhere to go and alternatively pressure to complete something.
I try to also do research into things, ways of thinking, writing—-like horror—-not my preferred genre to read or write—-or even watch in movies—-so now I’m watching horror movies to understanding the “beats”, the rhythms of how they work. I’ve already gone back into Mbube Mbube and noted where I needed to press for more foreboding/danger rather than dive into deep characterization. The point is the horrific horror/supernatural not the characters, as it is in other works.
Through bouncing throughout all of these projects I’m baking loaves of bread; through revisions and editing, baking bread, learning how to fix loaves of bread; and through jotting down new ideas I’m learning how to formulate “dough” better—-by doing things like setting up book layout/templates, approximating pages and chapters to insert writing to, jotting down broad strokes of ideas/characters so that they don’t clutter other ideas.
The pointed motivation becomes I’m interested in some form of resolution to not only the idea but also to the experimentation—-did I achieve a good horror novel? I’m also looking at a Young Adult novel, a mystery novel, a lesbian novel—-I want to try out as many genres as possible—-that keeps me “interested” in my own work and trying out (and yes, failing at some) but constantly trying.
Then I push myself with short stories, handwritten—-10–50 pages at a time, on ideas that might not be big enough for a full novel but are interesting or slice of life or good for a collection of short stories (two volumes so far, Escapades, again on Amazon).
I also tend to use good short stories, snippets, pieces in larger projects when I have a similar idea to formulate into a novel. I’m using a piece written long ago, diary entries for Free—-recycling if you will but also it’s a strong narrative piece that I could fit into a full chapter for such a complex tale.
It seems/sounds like a lot but what motivation and discipline have done—- imagine our bread metaphor is now a highway/road and that I’m further down the highway, by abut 30 years of writing, so I can bake bread better and faster, even if I don't’ finish it in one baking. It takes time to juggle so many ideas, hold so many projects so I try to juggle two or three at most at first—-one giving respite and rest from the others. Eventually time and ideas will multiply, especially when you start finishing projects so that you can do more and more, squeeze out more and more, start binders, pads and file folders of more and more.
The best advice to first discipline in motivation I can offer is start an organizational system on and offline, in boxes and on your computer——I often spend days just organizing, systematizing—-your writing—-projects to boxes, to research, templates of chapters/table of contents. It will make discipline a lot easier because you’ll have ready containers to pour your work into.
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Kyle Phoenix is a teacher, certified adult educator, sexologist, sex coach and sexuality educator with over two decades of intensive experience. He studied at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, New York University, and Columbia University. He has worked, consulted and taught individuals and focused professional developments for the CDC, Department of Education, Gay Men's Health Crisis, New York City Department of Health, non-profits, Fortune 500 companies and unions. He began his career facilitating on-campus workshops addressing a wide range of sexuality and sexual health issues and then moved on to teaching at universities, non-profits, private groups and clients, hosting The Kyle Phoenix Show on television and multiple online webinars, including YouTube and Sclipo and writing extensively through his blog, Special Reports, articles and other print and E books in the Kyle Phoenix Series on relationships, finance, education, spirituality and culture. He lives in New York with his family.
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