How do you feel when not writing? 🫤

Today's guest is author Bryan VanDyke.

Writing requires continual momentum.

Sometimes, it’s hard to know what a character does next or whether a scene even needs to exist. These moments can cause writers to lose steam, but embracing disruption can help: introduce something bold, cut problematic sections, or let big events unfold off the page. Take a risk. See what happens.

And if it doesn’t work? Delete it and try something else.

Find your flow state.

If the words are flowing, the story has momentum. And that’s what matters most. The creative process thrives on flexibility and the willingness to show up without judgment or self-importance. Plans are useful, but stories are meant to evolve — and sometimes the best ideas emerge when you let go of the map and follow where the writing takes you.

In today’s interview, author Bryan VanDyke shares how he maintains creative momentum, the techniques he uses to reignite a story, and why positioning your book for the right readers is just as important to publishing as the writing itself.

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OUR SPECIAL GUEST TODAY IS…

Bryan VanDyke

Author

Bryan’s debut novel, IN OUR LIKENESS, is a speculative literary story about the people who create an algorithm capable of making anything posted online come true in the real world. Selected as a notable book by The Millions, Our Culture, Gizmodo, and more, it’s available now!

What is the most memorable writing tip or technique that you have heard, and how did it influence your process?

I heard a lot of advice as a student in writing workshops, but nothing ever hit as hard as this: Just put in the words. Daily, if possible.

Quite famously, Graham Greene wrote 500 words a day — and once he hit that number, he would just put his work aside. He managed to write quite a few novels with that steady, clocklike pace; and a handful of those books are truly great, some of my most favorite novels.

As a practitioner, I fall short of Graham Greene’s model. There are days when I write nothing. And on days when things are humming, I will keep writing for as long as the words come. But I swear by the essence of his technique, which I take as this: Write without judgment, expectation, or self-importance. Keep at it, but know when to stand up and walk away.

The older I get, the more I see that my need to tell stories is a compulsive act; it's important to put stories into the world, and I enjoy the act of writing, but mostly I do it because I’m unhappy when I’m not writing. My wife can detect if I haven't been writing lately. There's a listless charge to the air around me. I'm distracted, moody. In contrast, when I am writing — when I'm putting the words in — I’m more at ease, more balanced in everything that I do.

What was the biggest obstacle you faced in your publishing journey?

A publishing journey can't even get started if a writer is bad at self-promotion. It's a non-negotiable, and every writer needs to spend time building the muscles for it. Because it's not enough to love writing stories. (Although you do have to love writing stories, too.)

Knowing the literary context for your work is incredibly important as a component of your pitch. If you're working and writing and trying to live a life, it’s hard to have an ear to the ground when it comes to other books. I read a lot, but I don't read as often as I'd like, and sometimes I like to read books that are nothing like the books I write —which pinches the time available even further.

You really only get better at pitching or positioning yourself by doing it again and again. Your approach has to be clear and authentic. I wrote and mailed hundreds and hundreds of failed query letters before it felt normal to talk about myself and my work. I went to dozens of meet and greets with agents and editors before it ever felt natural pitching someone on the spot. It still doesn't feel natural most of the time. But it has gotten easier.

What is one thing you wish you had known about the publishing process before going through it yourself?

I always knew publishing was a business, that a publisher needs an angle for a book; but I underestimated how important this is when it comes to managing reader expectations, too.

I took a seminar called "Beyond Genre" when I was a writing student. We read books that belonged to categories like “political thriller” or “crime novel,” and we dissected how those books broke out of their molds to become "real literature." It sounds super pretentious in retrospect, and at times the class discussions were condescending toward genres, but the experience taught me something really important: how a work is positioned by a publisher or a marketer has a huge impact on how a reader feels about a book. Prose matters, and tone, and style; but nothing matters as much as a reader’s expectations.

Most people pick up a book rarely, if ever. And the people who do read all do it for very personal reasons. Some people want escapism, others want to learn something new. Some people love genres, others hate them. But one thing is pretty consistent: very few readers will stick with a book that fails to meet their needs, whatever those needs happen to be.

I still believe in literature as a category. I still want to write smart, well-written books; but I also realize now that some readers will love a book that’s slapdash or derivative if it gives them what they need. As a writer, you’ve got to write what works for you–and then do your best to get that work positioned properly for the readers that you want to reach, whoever they are.

How do you balance finding time to write and managing other obligations and responsibilities?

Everybody I know who's a published writer also has a day job. I work as a digital strategist and marketer, and so there’s always some professional project that also has a bid on my time.

In some ways, it helps my writing to have other obligations. If I spend an hour or a day or a week in the workaday world, what tends to happen is that an urgency begins to develop, a desire to return to the writing part of my life. That stokes the flame, brings me back to the writing table.

Starting a new book is always a little dangerous; it preoccupies my mind and it absolutely disrupts my life. If I'm really invested in an idea, I dive in and out of it on my laptop or my phone whenever I have spare time. At coffee shops while waiting for someone else to arrive. Late at night after my family’s asleep. On the subway. More than once while walking the dog, the dog’s had to sit and wait while I thumbed an idea or a line into my phone.

My wife and I have very different sleep schedules, and for many years I wrote after she went to bed. When our kids were young, I struggled to find large blocks of time when I wasn’t too exhausted to work on large narratives. I wrote a lot of essays during that period–a format that I enjoy, but also one more conducive to shorter writing sessions.

The watchword is flexibility. Time, location, word counts, intentions–I have preferences, I have plans, but sometimes all that gets thrown out the window and I have to do what I can with whatever I’ve got.

How do you personally get over writer's block?

If I'm blocked on a piece, it's usually because I'm bored by it. If a scene loses urgency, if I'm not sure what a character does next, if I know I should write a section but the section feels pointless — that's when I lose steam.

My first technique to resolve this is to cause a ruckus on the page, to toss a disruption into the text — something that affects the world of the characters in a way that forces reactions, new things to figure out. This gets my brain moving, breaks the tedium. Nobody's bored when there's a lion in the room. So I try to introduce something big and scary and more powerful than what's already there. Scare yourself a little. Scare your characters. See what happens. If it doesn't work, that's OK. Delete it and try something else.

If introducing a disruption doesn't work, then I look for ways to cut a problematic scene altogether or to erase passages that trouble me. This works even if there's something that I feel like I have to write — a big reveal, or a confrontation. Huge events can happen outside the spotlight of the moment. If off-stage action was good enough for Sophocles, shouldn’t it be okay for novelists, too?

Are you a plotter or a pantser? What’s your personal drafting process like?

I’ve tried plotting and pantsing, and I failed at both, repeatedly, till I found a way to kind of have it both ways.

Before I start a book, I try to write at least a paragraph or two about the story itself — what’s going on, who it’s about. If I don't know what happens, I at least try to come up with character names, relationships, identifying traits, weird quirks. Then I write a scene or a few pages with these people or in service of the idea, whatever it is—and if it feels good, I write a little more.

Once I hit ten pages, it’s time to step back again. I make notes on prospective chapters, what might happen. The whole thing has to be headed somewhere, some big conflict or resolution—what might that be? I force myself to take a guess and before long—if the idea has legs and the characters have agency—I will have dozen or more chapters sketched out. I might even know the ending. Either way, it's a plan, and I can start writing the scenes it describes.

I’d like to say that once I have a plan, I’m set. But I'm constantly challenging plans. I get rid of problematic sections or plans with wanton acts of destruction. I delete scenes or chapters if they feel like dead ends. I combine characters or nix them altogether, and then I have to figure out how to fill the gap. I try to remain consistent but that’s less important than getting all the words out in service of the big arc. All that matters is that the story has momentum and that the writing keeps coming. Nothing else is sacred. Nothing can be.

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🤫 The Secret to Writing Perfect Scenes (YouTube)

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