Category: current projects

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to an Outline…

  By books, current projects, writer development, writing life

mapSo, I had tapped this writing year to be a year of finishing things. Unfinished stories, unfinished novels; they were going to be my focus. Some of that focus has been distracted by other happenings, but that’s still The Plan.

I’ve been reading Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series, which got me thinking about my partially-written 2011 NaNoWriMo novel, “Survival Skillz” (because zombies beget more zombies, ya know?). So I hauled out the manuscript and started reading it earlier this week. I discovered, to my surprise, that it’s in much better shape than I remembered. Likely because when I left it, I did so because, well–I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I was stuck. So it left a sort of bitter taste in my mouth.

That’s a not-uncommon problem for us discovery writers (aka “pantsers”). I’ve discovered, over time, that the problem is much less likely to crop up if I’ve thought a storyline through enough before I start writing, but depending on the year and circumstances in the rest of my life, that’s not always possible for NaNoWriMo. That’s what happened with Skillz: I loved the general idea and the characters, but I ran out of plot fuel along the way and the story got bogged down.

Well, it seemed to me that the sensible way to tackle the problem now was to have a think about the story (with the benefit of time and distance for clarity) and come up with an outline for the rest of the novel before attempting to write it. You have no idea what terror this strikes in my heart, because I do not have a very…successful…relationship with outlines. In this case, though, it seemed like I should be all sensible and do one.

I set about researching various ways of creating outlines, and even tapped a writer friend who is wise in the ways of outlines to blog about her methods. I tried to get in the correct frame of mind by updating my work-in-progress outline for the story as far as it went (I do this in Storylines, concurrently with writing a first draft because it really simplifies things in the later revision process). I fleshed out some background data on the existing story. I looked at some other outline-creating software (and decided I still liked Storylines best).

And…yesterday I realized what had to happen next in the story. I realized the probable fate of one of the characters. Today I wrote a whole new next chapter.

I still don’t have an outline. I’ll probably still try to write one, so that maybe I won’t get stuck again. But I guess I’ve remembered that even just sitting down and immersing myself in the story can get me a little further along the path to The End. And however I get there, as long as I get there, that’s what matters.

Photo credit: ariadna

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Treadmill Desk – January Stats

  By audiobooks, current projects, DIY, editing, just for fun, personal, writing life

P1040283So, some of you know that I set up a treadmill desk near the end of last year. I bought a secondhand treadmill in good condition, and my husband and I rigged up a prototype desk attachment with wood and duct tape so I could see if I was going to like it. I did. It took me a very short time to get used to typing while walking, and I used the desk a fair bit during NaNoWriMo in November. Not much in December, what with holidays and catching up after November. :)

Now we’ve ditched the prototype and made the “good” desktop from a piece of project pine. It’s bolted into place and there to stay (although it could be removed quite easily and the treadmill converted back to non-desk status in the future). I still need to put a few coats of finish oil on the wood, but it’s done for all intents and purposes. (If you are interested in more details on the DIY, please let me know!)

I planned that starting in January, I would try to track my usage of the desk (and the various outcomes). January turned out not to be what I consider a “normal” month, since some serious illness in our family affected both the time I had to walk and the things I did while walking. Still, I kept my records, so I can share them now. Aren’t you excited?

I track the time and distance I spend walking, average speed, the calories the treadmill tells me I burn (fwiw), and how I spent the time each session. Also, if I’m writing “new” words in a first draft, the number of words written. The breakdown for January is:

Time: 902 minutes (just over 15 hours)

Distance: 26.93 miles (Yes, I’m in Canada, I should be tracking kilometers; however, I haven’t figured out how to change that setting on the treadmill yet. However, being of a certain age, both miles and kms make perfect sense to me, so it’s all good.)

Calories burned: 5077 (Wow, that sounds like a LOT. It translates to having lost 3.6 pounds, so it IS a lot!)

Avg. speed: 1.78 mph (I try to keep up around 1.8-2.0, but depending on what I’m doing while walking, sometimes a bit slower is better.)graph-treadmill-january

Activities: For this, I made a chart! As you can see, I spent half my time on the treadmill in January–playing Torchlight II. I make no excuses for this. It was good stress relief at a very stressful time for our family. The editing was for the deadline I was working toward on the 15th of the month; I think all of it took place at the beginning of the month, and then I moved on to Torchlight in the second part of the month. I am hoping the breakdown for February will be different, because that will mean things have improved. :)

I have to say, I love my desk. Although it takes up a fair amount of space in my relatively tiny office, it’s well worth it. Writing is by nature a sedentary pursuit, but it doesn’t really have to be! (And yes, I wrote this while walking on the treadmill!)

 

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The Resolution (It Took A While)

  By books, current projects, personal, publishing, writer development, writing life

books-CRW_5724Resolutions, goals, plans–whatever you like to call them, I do like to make at least one for the new year. My best goal planning usually comes in September, but that’s because my life still largely revolves around the school year. But, yes, January is a good planning time, too.

But I wasn’t sure what to say about that…how to get specific…seems like I’ve made lots of plans and goals (particularly to do with writing) before. Some pan out, some don’t, some get shoved aside by other things and some get forgotten. I didn’t really want to repeat myself, so I’ve been pondering the matter (when this rewrite I’m immersed in gives me time to ponder, which isn’t often).

And then I remembered. I do have one plan for this year. I’m going to publish a novel.

It might be via the traditional route, it might be a Kindle serial, it might be completely self-published, or it might be some weird hybrid that I can’t put a name on right now.

But it’s coming before the end of 2013…so stay tuned.

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Eleven Reasons To Love Deadlines

  By current projects, Eleven Reasons, writer development, writing life

Photo by stockarch“Yeah, right,” I can hear you saying. “Deadlines are horrible. Deadlines are stressful. Nobody likes deadlines, let alone loves them!”

Well, I can see your point. Even the name is kind of scary, isn’t it? Deadline. Obviously there are going to be dire consequences if such a thing arrives and you are not prepared.

For writers, though (as well as others, but on this blog, we mainly talk writers, right?), having a deadline can be a positive experience—if you look at it in the right light. Here are eleven* reasons that a deadline can actually be your friend.

1. Deadlines force you to plan your time realistically. You’re always trying to get more organized and use your time better, right? Well, a deadline will make you look at how you’re spending your time and how much time it actually takes you to accomplish something. If you take that knowledge with you beyond the deadline, that time-planning can spill over into your other work and help your productivity beyond this one project.

2. Deadlines make you take control of your work instead of letting it control you. This is a common pitfall for writers; let me give you an example. If you are going to have this eight-thousand-word short story ready to submit before the submission period closes, you don’t have the luxury of following every whimsy of subplot and character idiosyncrasy that your brain comes up with. You have to write this story in a good tight first draft, edit it judiciously, and call it done. You have to take control. Bring that kind of control to other projects, and you’ll end up more productive overall.

3. Deadlines force you to be focused and efficient. Here’s another example. You have five days to finish this manuscript. It shouldn’t take you more than one of those five days to figure out, for instance, that you work most productively in the mornings and are essentially useless after dinner. The next four days, you’re going to make sure you spend time on your deadline project in the mornings. Take this knowledge with you to the next project, and stop doing email and blogging in the mornings instead of writing. Let deadlines teach you skills that go beyond a single project.

4. Deadlines force you to re-evaluate your level of perfectionism. If you have too many manuscripts sitting around on your hard drive because they’re just “not quite ready yet,” this one is for you. Yes, you may end up with a less-than-perfect manuscript if you set a deadline to finish it. But the perfect manuscript is something of a mirage, anyway. Better to have a finished one in submission than a never-done one languishing in a drawer.

5. Deadlines make you develop strategies to bypass procrastination. This one doesn’t need much explanation. You may have the cleanest house on the block or be the best Angry Birds player in town, but if you’re going to meet deadlines, you have to learn to recognize and bypass your own procrastination strategies. One way to do this is to make your procrastination tasks reward tasks instead. You can play ten minutes of Angry Birds or switch your laundry loads along after you work on your project for an hour (be sure to set timers for both!). You may find such things less appealing as rewards. If so, swap them out for something that really appeals to you–as a reward.

6. Deadlines make you realize what it is actually possible for you to achieve. Anyone who’s participated successfully in NaNoWriMo understands this one. Deadlines take all the skills we’re talking about here and let you smoosh them into a big ball of I-can-do-this. And once you know what’s possible…well, you’re likely to take on, and accomplish, more.

7. Deadlines allow you to plan for what’s beyond the deadline. If you have a deadline to meet, it means you’re actually going to finish this project and be able to move on to something else. No-one really wants to edit the same novel manuscript for the rest of their lives, do they? Of course not! You want to finish something so you can get to the Next Big Thing. But neither do you want to drop half-finished projects just to get to the next one. Deadlines let you set parameters to work on things, finish them, and then move ahead.

8. Deadlines help you figure out what your real priorities are. This is sort of related to #7. Sometimes you’ll have to choose between projects because of conflicting deadlines. If you’ve been dithering, trying to work on two or more projects but not really making satisfying progress on anything, a deadline can make you choose what’s important and focus on that.

9. Deadlines make you stop wasting time and actually complete something. Maybe you’re one of those people who’s always talking about writing but not really writing. Maybe you’ve been working on the same damn manuscript for so long that even you’re sick of it. Maybe you’re really trying to write, but something is holding you back—fear of failure, fear of success, yada, yada, you know the list as well as I do. A deadline can make you, er, produce—or get off the pot.

10. Deadlines let you cross something off your project list. Ah, the list. Don’t tell me you don’t have one, and that you don’t know the sweet, sweet satisfaction of crossing something off it. And if you don’t, you should make one. Really. Because there’s nothing as lovely as “Finish X by DD/MM/YYYY” with a big fat strikethrough running across it.  Unless it’s writing “The End.”

Off to try and meet a big deadline of my own.

*Why eleven? Because everyone does lists of ten. I’m trying to think outside the box, here, people.

Photo credit: stockarch

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The Sort-of Outline

  By current projects, writer development, writing life

http://www.sxc.hu/profile/tijmenI’ve mentioned many times that I’m not really an outliner…much more of a discovery writer. I like to know the general shape of the story but not its entire geography before I start–if I know too much, the writing of it doesn’t actually interest me anymore. I doubt that that much will ever really change.

However, I set out to write a new story recently (well, I began it back in August and then that pesky September hiatus things happened) and I wondered if, especially since it’s a sort of a mystery story, I should have a few things mapped out. Just about the same time, I was going through some documents on my hard drive and came across a method for Outlining Three-Act Structure with Turning Points.

Okay, I do know that I found this somewhere…on the Internet. Where, I now have no idea. I am going to do some hunting, but a preliminary google failed to turn it up. So if you, dear reader, happen to know where this helpful thing originated, please tell me so I can point others in that direction and give credit.

At any rate, this helpful method breaks the outline into (obviously) three acts. Act 1 includes two things: 1) Setup and 2) The Initiating Event. You introduce your main character(s), get a feel for setting and situation, and then have something happen that sets the plot in motion. “The moment when everything changed,” as I like to think of it.

In Act 2, there are five–not sure what to call them; steps or turning points or elements–that move the story along. I’ll list them:
1) External Conflict Emerges. The main plot driver happens and the main character must make a decision to act. Now the MC has a goal.
2) Antagonist Arrives. This could be a person or an obstacle, but it will make the main character’s goal harder to reach.
3) Conflict Rises. Things get progressively more difficult. Maybe solutions are attempted and fail.
4) The Reversal. Something really bad happens and circumstances are radically changed for the MC and his/her struggle to attain the goal.
5) The Point of No Return. Something happens, or the MC makes a decision, that means there’s no turning back. The only choice is to move ahead.

That’s a lot of stuff going on in Act 2, but remember, this is really the bulk of your story. This is the “middle”, which is where a lot of writers get stuck. I think having this guide would make it a lot easier to figure out all the stuff that has to happen in that middle. (NaNoWriMo planners, I’m looking at you!)

Act 3 has just four points or parts. They are:
1) Crisis. The worst happens. It seems that there is no chance of success or that the price of success is going to be too high.
2) The Dark Moment. The MC thinks that all hope is lost, and must draw upon his/her deepest reserves of courage to succeed. The decision made here leads to the action that culminates in…
3) The Climax. The finale. The final confrontation or struggle. The MC attains the goal–or doesn’t.
4) The Resolution. Loose ends are tied up and the world and the MC come back into balance. We see what has changed (or not) in the course of the story. The end.

So, I printed out this list down one column on a sheet of paper, then went through and scribbled in the events or ideas I had for each step. Voila! A very general road map of my story, but not so much that I don’t feel like writing it. And the added bonus is that I could see where I needed to do some more thinking, or where I might run into roadblocks when writing.

I know, I know, that’s what outlines are supposed to do.

Now, not all stories must or should follow this structure, of course. But I think for plot-driven stories it’s a nice general guide–not formulaic, lots of room for variety, but a good structural guide.

Maybe I’ve found a good middle ground that will work for me. Let me know if you give it a try!

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/tijmen

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The 1000-Word Diet

  By current projects, personal & miscellaneous, writer development, writing life

Alphabet_soup by strawberryblues [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsYou know how “the experts” advise folks who are going on a diet to tell their friends and family that they’re doing so? The idea is that because the prospect of public failure is so much more daunting than that of private failure, the act of telling folks your plans adds more fuel to your motivational fire.

It could be true; it does seem to make some sense. But no, I’m not going on a diet. I’m talking about writing.

I tend to keep a lot of my writing plans to myself (or to share them mainly with my friends who are also writers, and understand the pale fragility of writing plans). I learned this the hard way long ago when I was writing my first novel and made no secret of the fact. Thus there was that one acquaintance (you all know the one) who brought up the health of said novel every time we met, over the course of years. Not an experience I’d like to repeat. So even now, with a decent number of published stories and a public persona as “a writer”, I tend to keep my plans close to my chest.

I’ve also generally shied away from the idea of quotas in my writing. The attempt to make daily or weekly word quotas would have been a very bad idea for me for most of my previous writing life, said life being largely prey to the vagaries of kids, pets, extended family, other committments, and the whims of mischievous fate. I knew that setting quotas would be an exercise in futility that would leave me more depressed than inspired. (Except during NaNoWriMo, of course, because I simply decided that everything else, for one month of the year, could wait.)

Now, however, I think I’m going to ditch both of those old notions in one go. I’ve decided to try setting myself a 1000-word per day quota for a while (probably weekends excluded, because I still don’t have a whole lot of control over those), and here I am, telling you all about it.

I think my timing is perfect, because during October I’ll be very inspired to do it since it’s something new, and then we’ll be into November, when hopefully I’ll be hitting more than that to make my NaNoWriMo quota. By that time it will be a two-month habit and hopefully well-established. No doubt Christmas will come along and smash it to pieces, but I feel it’s worth a try.

I’m happy to also have a project underway that’s moving along at a pretty snappy pace so far. After a September when the most I could do was manage a few blog posts a week, and then the wheels fell off even that meagre attempt, I seem to have passed some unseen barrier and be back on track.

Here’s to experimentation, anyway. Hell, I even — sort of — wrote an outline for this new story. Will wonders never cease? But more about that later.

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The Five Stages of Novel Revision

  By current projects, editing, projects, publishing, Uncategorized, writer development, writing life

Pick an emotion…any emotion…

The other day I watched a video by James Andrew Wilson, called The Emotional Stages of Writing a Novel. It’s both funny and true, so if you’re a writer (or even if you’re not) you should go and watch it.

Having recently been asked by an editor to revise a novel*, I think there are several stages to that process, as well. Here they are:

1. Elation Disappointment Disalation? I don’t know what to call this stage. Someone likes your novel and has said nice things about it! They think it has promise! Hurray! But you have to change things. It’s not perfect. The road ahead is paved with hard, hard work. Wah! It’s wonderful and horrible at the same time. You need a drink, some ice cream, or (insert favorite comfort item here) while it all sinks in.

2. Despair You don’t know how to do this. You can’t do this! Those changes won’t work! They’re too hard! They’ll wreck your novel! You can’t cut that subplot because then no-one will understand why the vagrant had to be blind. You can’t cut the busboy character because wasn’t it obvious that he was the one who saw the murder and reported it anonymously to the police? And how can the novel work at all without the circus? *headdesk*

3. Planning Okay, you just need to take a while and think about this. Think, and make a lot of notes. Maybe buy one of those huge whiteboards and diagram the entire novel on it. No! Better still, paint a wall of your office with chalkboard paint and diagram it there! Also, print out all the editor’s comments and highlight them with different colors according to level of importance, then glue them onto giant pieces of bristol board and brainstorm revision ideas around them! Oh yes, the pieces are all going to fall into place now…

4. Actual Work Half the time allotted for the revisions has now flown past. You’ve started seven different methods for working out how to fix your novel, but they’re all too much work or are too confusing. Finally you sit down with a printout of your novel and a red pen, and start reading and making notes. When you’re done, you start typing in your changes. It takes you all the rest of the time you’ve got and you have to alienate your family and friends to get it finished, but you do it. You think it stinks.**

5. Collapse You’ve sent in the revision just in time. By now you hardly care if the editor likes it or not–all that matters is that it’s done and you don’t have to look at the horrible thing any more…at least until the editor emails you…

*more details on that another day
** or you think it’s brilliant. Don’t worry, that won’t last.

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[Process] The Story Idea (Part 1)

  By current projects, projects, writer development, writing life

I’m in the process throes of creating a new short story this past week, so I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the mechanics as I move through the process. Every writer has his or her own way of doing this, and sometimes even different processes for different stories, so this is certainly not a “how-to” as much as a “this-is-how-I’m-doing-it-this-time.”

My process has changed over time. I used to come up with the start of an idea—maybe even just a first line, or a first scene, or a character in a setting—and sit down to start writing. Over time, I learned that in general, this was a bad idea for me. I have a LOT of story beginnings (let’s say anywhere from two to ten pages) that fizzled out, tripped up, or bogged down and never went any further. I’ve even found stuff on my hard drive that I don’t remember writing, or have no idea where they were going or what I thought the story was going to be about.*

There’s not a huge market for story beginnings. Just like there’s not a huge market for standalone first chapters.

After a while, I learned the first lesson about me and the way I write stories: don’t start too soon.

I need to allow time for an idea to percolate before I start putting words on paper (or virtual paper—you know what I mean). Although I often want to sit down and start banging out words, I consciously make myself wait until I have thought through more of the story. I’m not an outliner, but I do often make notes as I’m thinking about the story and the shape it will take.

For this new story, I knew I had a certain theme to consider, because I’m writing it for a themed anthology. The first thing to decide was how I wanted to incorporate the theme—what kind of story did I want to write? I mulled that over for a few days, trying out numerous bits of idea flotsam and jetsam before I realized that I want to write a humorous story. Could that work with the theme? It would be a little unusual, but it could work. Good. Now I knew the tone of the story.

Next I needed at least one character, and ideally two, who would be the main players in the piece. They stepped onto the stage quickly, now that I knew what kind of story I was writing. Only one had a name yet, but that was all right. I put them both onstage in my mind, and thought about their relationship.

Now, maybe you’re picturing me sitting in my tidy, inspiring office, staring out the window or into the middle distance while I put all my concentration and creative energy into this bold and invigorating hunt for story. Sorry to shoot down that lovely little image, but that’s not how it’s happening this time around. I’ve been travelling, on a family vacation, as I’m working on this story idea, so my thinking time has been 1) while we’re driving, 2) when I’m falling asleep, 3) when I’m in the shower, and 4) when I’m awake in the middle of the night listening to all the unidentified noises in and around our cottage and trying NOT to imagine what could be making them.

In spite of this, after three or four days of thinking, I have some characters, a mood, and a general idea of the story problem (also known as a little thing called plot**). No notes yet, but that’s okay; I haven’t come up with any details or plot twists that I’m likely to forget. Also no title yet, but a couple of ideas.

I’m off to a good start. And this is getting long, so I’ll pick up the process (and hopefully have more to report) in Part 2…

*This experience is scarier than you might think.
**Not vital to all stories, but definitely so for the ones I write, and like to read.

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Summer Project

  By current projects, editing, writer development, writing life

So, that Bare Knuckle Writer really knows how to pull the strings and make me dance, whether intentionally, or not. She’s got me blogging more often (almost, like, regularly), and yesterday she threw down a gauntlet. (Yeah, she’s a little confrontational, but in a very endearing way.)

You really should go and read her entire post, because it’s fun and quirky as usual, but here’s the gauntlet part:

Every writer’s got one. That project whose time never comes. All it needs is a little love, but somehow it keeps getting pushed back in favour of new things and shinier ideas…This is its time. Dig that thing out, take it out to the back deck or the beach or the patio with you, and get to work.

And…she’s right. Of course she’s right. Who doesn’t have one (or more) of those projects, whether it’s a half-finished story, a novel, or something else? Honestly, I have more than I care to admit, but I’m not going to think about that or I’ll start crying into my keyboard. Or start a new chocolate binge. Possibly both. But I digress.

After reading the challenge yesterday, I printed out the manuscript you see in the photo above. It’s so close to being done that you can almost smell the done-ness on it. One more line-edit pass, that’s all it needs. It’s already been rewritten, revised, substantively edited and mostly line-edited.

Why has it been lying around for so long in this state of almost-finished-ness? Because it’s a bit of a strange project. A bit unclassifiable. A mash-up of genres. In plain words, I have no idea who might want to publish it.

But that’s not really the point, is it? The problem of what to do with it is not a problem until it’s done. So I’ll finish it. And then I’ll worry about what to do with it.

Sounds like a plan. BKW, I hope you’re reading this.