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Archive for the ‘Writing Process’ Category

New Keyboard!

Due to wrist/tendon pain, I’ve taken a couple days off writing (oh noes!). But now, thanks to my many and awesome writer buddies, I’ve adjusted my desk, adjusted my chair, gotten wrist braces, and have a brand new keyboard due to arrive on Friday.

So hopefully that will end the pain, because while I’ve proven to myself that I can write through the pain (Over 50,000 words this month, which took some doing 20-30 mins of writing at a time, sigh), I’m not all that fond of pain and it really makes the fun part (telling the damn story) a lot less fun. I’ll let you all know at the end of next week how the new set-up and stuff is going. Hopefully solving this new issue will mean unparalleled personal productivity, or at least a couple novels finished by the end of the year.

Speaking of productivity and finishing novels, Kevin J Anderson put up an amazing and blunt post about writing and putting in the time. I recommend anyone who is still stuck in the “writing slow or writing less = better” mindset go read his post (or really, anyone who wants to be a pro writer should read this post). From everything I’ve read and seen, those writers who treat writing the same way you’d treat any business and day-job tend to do the best and stay publishing consistently.  This is why I’m following the path I’ve chosen and why I (try to) put in consistent hours of writing and treat my writing the way I’d treat starting up a small business.

Writing for a living, and a very good living, is totally possible.  But it is work 🙂

Failure, Rejection, Depression, and Sundry

This post will likely be rambling and a little ranty.  (And apparently sappy at the end)  You have been warned.

As of Saturday to be on target for my goals this month I needed 21,000 words done.  As of Saturday, I had just shy of 9,000.  Writing for the last few months has been very difficult for me, like pulling teeth to get any words out at all (which is why that last novel took four months when it should have taken two at most).  I’ve engaged a friend in a challenge (with whole dinners on the line!) for monthly word count goals in the hopes that I can shove past whatever is blocking me.  Last week, not so much with the shoving, obviously.

Alas, what’s blocking me is… me.  Or more specifically my brain chemicals.  Lots of quote “creative types” deal with depression and other issues, and I’m no exception unfortunately.  I struggle with life-long insomnia issues among other things (which is how I read so damn much, it’s easy to find time to read when you only sleep 2-5 hours a day).  Sometimes the writing process just stutters and stops.  I think this is one reason I’ve always been a “binge” writer.  When I’m running well I have to do as much as I can as fast as I can because I don’t know when suddenly the images will stop forming up right in my head and the mental white noise will start to take over.

The other thing blocking me is my old friend self-doubt.  Writing is easy.  Writing for a living, not so easy.  Especially in the stage I’m in, where I’m starting to break out a bit and hopefully learning my to cross my Ps and dot my Is.  Sales are wonderful motivators, but fear of success can be just as deadly as fear of failure.  Things are tight right now in my home life because of the sacrifices we’ve made so I can pursue my dream and my goals and now, a year and a half into the ten year plan, the reality of the situation has definitely sunk in.  We’re fine, we’re making it work, but as always I can’t help but put pressure on myself to write, do more, learn more, be more. Thinking long-term is good, but it doesn’t necessarily help the short-term panic attacks.

I almost broke my number of rejections in one week record this week, which of course doesn’t help either.  I don’t even know what my rejection total is up to, though if I had to guess I’d say over 200 easily.  In less than two years.  What that number should (and does, when I’m thinking rationally) say to me is that hey, I’m producing and sending out lots of work.  But sometimes I stare at yet another “this was well-written but no thanks” or “this was fun, but ultimately we decided not to publish it” etc and think “so they don’t like fun, well-written work.  What the hell should I be writing?”.  It’s a war inside between the rational/business brain telling me that it isn’t personal (because it really, really isn’t) and that I just need to take a deep breath and put the story back in the mail, and the irrational side of my brain “zomg u suckzorz and r gettin wurse.  stUpid RITUR.”

What does this all really mean? Basically…nothing.  So I’m 12,000 words behind where I needed to be.  Over the next few weeks I can easily find another 12-15 hours somewhere in there to catch myself up.  It’s adding an hour a day to a couple weeks of work.  Rationally not a big deal.  What does the rejection mean? Again, not much (beyond the fact that hey, apparently I write fun, well-written stories and stuff).  But the depression, the sleeplessness, the slog, it all combines to make my life not peachy at the moment.  I’ll catch up though (so stop planning your sushi outing, Amanda…) because I hate to lose a bet for one, and because any job has bad days, and any job I have is one that gets affected by my depression/insomnia issues, and in the end, I get to sit on my ass and make shit up and people have paid me (and will pay me in the future damnit!) to do this.  Which is still awesome, any way you look at it.

So for anyone who is struggling this month (and let’s face it, November ain’t a great month.  I didn’t like it before my brother died during it and I sure don’t care for it afterward either), you’re okay.  Everything will work out.  If you are doing NaNoWriMo and you fail one day, or one week, no need to stress.  It’s cool.  Think about it this way: if you fall short by 10 or 20 or even 30k words, you’ve still written 40 or 30 or 20k words more than you would have if you hadn’t even tried at all.  And for all the writers in my shoes, us neo-pros who see more no than yes still, it’ll get better.  We’re just getting started.  Sure, we take a few on the chin during the opening round, but really, we’re just lulling our opponents into a false sense of superiority.  The next story we write? It’s going to KO some editor, somewhere, sometime.  As long as we don’t throw in the towel, as long as we keep sitting on our asses and making shit up and sticking it in the mail.  Because that’s what counts and that’s the only score worth keeping.

It never ends.

Library Study Project

As I move beyond the writing level where advice like “use proper manuscript format” and “don’t insult editors” no longer suffices, I’ve been looking for more ways to expand my writing skills and new things to learn.  In the pursuit of more advanced learning, I’ve come across a lot of advice from other writers, some of which I think is awesome, and some of which just makes me scratch my head (because either I’m clueless or I just don’t learn that way).

One of the bits of advice that I found valuable was to read the bestsellers and study people further ahead down the road I want to walk.  I decided to take that advice.  I’m not even close to rich, so alas, I can’t just go buy a million books like I’d want to.  But on the other hand, that forced me to do something I haven’t done in a while.  I went to my local library, and by local, I mean within a five minute walk from my home.  Can’t really beat that.  I do love owning books, but, from an economic standpoint, the mission I was about to embark on wasn’t feasible.

So in May I decided to suck it up and go to the library.  After paying 13.47 in library fines from 1998, I got my information updated (the library never forgets!) and was on my way.  I was just about to start writing a mystery/thriller/suspense novel (I thought it was a thriller, I’m told it’s actually a mystery, so what do I know? From here on out, I’m abbreviating those genres M/T/S and lumping them together, damnit).  So I decided to start with that section, which I quickly learned is shelved together with general fiction anyway. Sci/fi and Fantasy has its own section, as does YA, and chapter books.

The plan? Read at least five books by any author on the shelf with at least ten books who has been published in the last five years.  That’s a heck of a lot of authors, across a lot of genres.  I started with names I recognized, like Roberts and Patterson.  So far I’ve read over 100 books since May.  I make myself give each book 100 pages to lose or keep my interest and I think only two or three have failed past that point.  I’ve started reading authors I haven’t heard of as well, as long as they fit the 10+ books rule and are still publishing (or have been in the last few years).  The librarians have even commented on how much I read. Crazy.

But I’m not just reading for reading sake (or to impress librarians).  Every book I read I make mental (and sometimes physical) notes on what that author does that I think works, and why I like it, and how I might be able to emulate it.  Some books I’ve read twice.  I’ve even, as much as I detest outlining other’s works, have reversed outlined a few books to see how the plots work and where the emotional and storyline beats are.  I don’t love every part of every book I read, but I’m starting to see patterns and similarities of what these authors are doing with their writing that keeps them selling books.  And this process is starting to show me what I really like in what I read, and thus also what I might want to work on incorporating into my stories.

I’m only a few months into the library project.  I don’t know if I’ll keep it up quite as hard core, since I’m missing reading stuff that doesn’t fit into my qualifications, so I’ve started taking side forays into books that are coming out now or have come out that I want to read.  But I’m going to stay on top of the bestsellers, for sure, and keep seeing what’s working for the long-time professionals out there.  Because they are stomping down a path I want to be on, and while I might make my own sideways journey to the same destinations, I figure I can only learn something from those who’ve carved the paths ahead.

So that’s the library project.  Look at the shelves and see which authors (or pen names, however you slice it) have more than ten books on the shelves.  Check to make sure the author has published at least one book in the last five years (or ten or whatever you want to go with).  Then read at least five books by that author and pay attention to what you like, what you don’t like, what works, what doesn’t, and similarities between that work and others that have sold a lot.

Step three: profit.

Ok, still working on that one *grin*

(More) Things I Learned about Novels

The novel is finished.  It’s the third one I’ve written (well, that I count, because the early attempts were just that…attempts).

This novel kicked my ass.  I don’t think I’ve ever found a writing project to be so difficult before.  But I learned some valuable lessons.

1) In the future when choosing to write a novel in a genre I’ve never so much as tried writing a short story in, allow more time than I think I’ll need.  A lot more.  Like twice as much or better.  This will be very important to keep in mind if I’m ever under contract, because I’ll need to allow for a further out deadline than I might otherwise.

2) Just because a book has a lot going on and multiple points of view doesn’t mean it will be long.  I figured that once I added a third semi-major view-point character that I’d be good on the length problem.  No the case (though closer than the book would have come otherwise).

3) Fast pacing doesn’t mean skipping description.  I think I also finally started to grasp the idea that “setting is character opinion” better in this book, so even if the rest of it is a giant fail, I got to practice pacing and setting.

4) It doesn’t have to be good, because frankly, in the middle of a book, I don’t even know what good is anyway.  All I can see is the thousands of words standing in the way of finishing and the giant mess that might be on the page behind me.  Done is good.  Done is my new definition of good.

So.  That’s over.  Now, if my brain will stop trying to write sequels, I’m going back to short fiction and working on the e-book project until the end of the year.  I miss short fiction.  Being able to begin and end something in a single session sounds like heaven right now.  And I’ve got five (yes…five! I’m so behind on admin work) stories that need to go out to markets.

As for the finished book, I have no idea.  It’s being workshopped this next weekend and the query will go out to editors.  I’ve given it to a couple first readers as well.  Whenever they get back to me is when I’ll drag it out into daylight again and see about adding enough words (5-7k should do it) to make it commercially viable.  Unless it gets a full request before then, in which case I’ll go into panic mode and do whatever needs doing at that point.

Overdrive! Progress Meter!

Hey, I solved a problem with my novel (the first one in the doom writing drive of doom).  But that problem that I solved? It means more words (which is good, the novel was going to be too short to market).

So here we go. I’ll update this post instead of spamming my blog with meters.  So check back to see how screwed I am *grin*

Goal is 155,000 words by September 10th.

Progress:

74459 / 155000

Perception vs Reality

I’ve had some low moments this past week (really, couple of weeks).  The lowest came the other night as I sat in front of the computer having just finished up the eighth chapter of my current work in progress (WIP?).  I’d hit the 10k word mark, which is great on the one hand, and terrible on the other.  Eight chapters, only 10,000 words.  Short chapters are fine (it’s a suspense novel, I’ve noticed lots of authors use short chapters in those).  What isn’t good is that my outline only had 28 chapters listed out.  At my current chapter average, I was going to top out at 35k words.  That’s not a novel.

The good news was that my early chapters where things are getting set up were really short, while the later ones had been growing (averaging more 1500-1800 words each).  I guessed I’d be hitting more like 55-60k words at that rate.  Which is still too short.

So I did what any self-respecting novelist would do.  I quit and went and read a book, went for a walk, and watched some soccer replays.  In my brain I despaired.  How could I waste the last couple weeks of effort? I’d pushed through writing with a hurt shoulder, I’d forced myself to do at least some words each day.  I’d pulled 10k words out onto the page and the story was really starting to rev up.

That night was not my finest hour.  I came this –  – close to quitting the novel entirely and starting yet another something else.

Then yesterday morning I got up, watched a bunch of soccer, and in between matches I decided to look at my outline one more time.  Were there places I could add things? Were there scenes that weren’t fleshed out enough? And I looked at each transition and told myself the thing I always tell myself: “Need more peril!”.   Guess what? I found places that could use more peril.  Shocking, I know.  I found little areas between the described chapters where I’d let the pressure off the main character, I found places where I’d skipped journeys that had potential for danger, and meetings with people that could possibly go horribly wrong instead of smoothly right.

And I added ten chapters to my outline.  I don’t know if I’ll make my goal of 80k words, but I think I’ll get a within striking distance.  I’ve never had an outline be so much work before. Whew.

Which brings me to my perception vs reality.  Even up to a year or two ago, I would have told anyone who asked me about it that I want to write epic fantasies (or as E.Bear calls them- fat fantasies with maps).  I’ve always had this image of myself as a writer of giant novel books, thick tomes full of adventure and sweeping setting.

How many of these epics have I actually written? None. (No, I don’t count the 40 page ‘novel’ I penned at the age of 11.  It was only epic to the poor people slogging through it).  I don’t generally write long.  I don’t know how that happened.  My fat fantasy novel currently out on submission is a whopping 88k words.  I figure this suspense novel will be lucky to bump up against 80k words.  I have a couple short stories that go over 6k words, but just a couple (and some of my 4-6k stories are ones that I’m sure others would advise cutting a bit out of).

I don’t know why I can’t seem to write long.  I have a suspicion that it is in part a weakness in my writing.  I’m probably glossing over parts that might need more description, leaving out setting when I should build it up, skimming conversations between characters, and probably missing points where more pressure could be applied to the story.  I think the fact that I was able to go into my outline and dig another ten chapters out of it indicates that I missed a lot on the first pass through the outline, in my first concept of the story as a whole.  Come to think of it, this is the third time I’ve revised an outline for a novel to be bigger than it was initially.  This process is becoming part of my novel writing process.  Which I don’t think is a bad thing.  I’d rather revise the outline as I go and find the points of pressure or setting or whatever that I’m missing than miss it all entirely.

But I should probably stop thinking about myself as an epic fantasy writer.  That or write an epic fantasy or three.  If I can.  I don’t know if I could.  Seems like a challenge I should take up.  You know, once I’m done writing the other ten things on my plate. *grin*

Characters and Pain

This will be a fairly short post, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, but I wanted to at least get these thoughts out while I was having them.

First, I quit the middle grade novel. I’m done for now, the fun has gone out of it and the voice of the piece isn’t in my head anymore. So I’m setting it down and turning to finishing my suspense/crime novel. Which turned into me restarting my suspense/crime novel. I hadn’t touched the file in a long time, and it turned out that I had only about 6k words done (2k less than I’d thought, oops). Also, the beginning wasn’t what I wanted. I’ve learned so much about setting and character in the last few months that those six thousand words didn’t reflect what I’m capable of now.

So I started over yesterday. It’s been slow going with the writing this whole week because I’ve been in horrible pain from a shoulder injury. Which brings me to characters and pain. I used to watch House, mostly for Hugh Laurie (ok, maybe ALL for him), and stopped watching when the episodes kept focusing too much on the plots and not so much on the characters. Having spent a scant week in horrible, never-ending pain, I now “get” House’s character even better. I’ve been an irritable bitch this entire week, and I fully blame the pain. Pain really does bring out the worst in me, as it brought out the worst in Dr. House. I don’t know how I’m going to work this into characters yet, but I’ve definitely filed away this hard-learned lesson for later.

I’ve been working on giving my characters more sides, more depth. Sometimes this comes from giving them better goals, and sometimes from giving them better weaknesses. I’m mostly working on pacing in this current novel, but I’m still practicing character building as well. My main character is a con artist, thief, and absentee mother of a chronically sick kid. Not the most obviously sympathetic protagonist. It’s her voice, her opinions, and her ultimate humanity and struggle that will make or break whether readers like her or not (though having a serial killer douchebag as the antagonist won’t hurt I think). That’s a challenge to write, but I think it’ll be good practice (and I love anti-heroes, personally, when done well).

Anyway, I’m going to go ice my shoulder and take more pills. And maybe watch an episode of House after I write a “please don’t divorce me I love you I’m sorry” card to my husband *grin*

(That last is a joke, he’s putting up with me admirably)

My Goals… And Speed.

I feel I should clarify my goals and my writing speed.  Dean’s already warned me to keep my mouth shut in public about how much or how fast I write, and while I’ll probably take his advice and be more vague at Cons and such, this is my blog and I’m not a prevaricating kind of girl *grin*.

First, my goals are just that.  Mine.  They certainly don’t reflect anything but how I want to go about pursuing writing as my career.  I’ve never been a “kinda” person.  I learned to win at poker by playing 2 cent/4 cent limit online 15-20 hours a day, everyday for weeks while reading every source on poker that I could get my hands on (And I still graduated college, a miracle!).  I did this because I liked poker, I was broke, and I hate being crappy at things (and broke).  I took that same mentality to my jobs over the years, too, and it got me stressed-out with 70 work weeks.  I’m not saying it is always a good mindset, this all or nothing.  But it’s mine, and that’s how I am, so I deal with it.

Writing is the same way for me.  I spent 20 years writing stories, showing very few to anyone because I was certain they sucked (and they did, they really did) and very very frustrated that I couldn’t improve.  I was trapped in the “real writers are re-writers” myth and going nowhere.

Then I basically said “fuck it”, applied to an MFA program, started writing more, realized the MFA program was not at all for me (but I learned some tricks and made a couple friends in one of the workshops at the least, so it wasn’t a total waste).  Then I discovered Heinlein’s Rules, had a writer friend point me to Dean Wesley Smith’s website, and suddenly (or so it seemed), I started improving.  Because I was writing. I was writing a lot (well, a lot more anyway).  New stuff. Not picking over draft after draft, but just taking what I thought worked and trying it again. And again. And again.

Writing all this new stuff has opened methods of practicing things I’d never gotten to really try before.  Picking over the same old story again and again didn’t let me try out the techniques I found in the books I love.  But writing a new story did.  I could take that story and write it with Donald E. Westlake’s surprising way of describing things in mind.  Or with Terry Brook’s way of making you love a character and then twisting the knife.  Or Elizabeth Moon’s way of making kick-ass seem normal and flawed and still cool.  Or Michael Connelly’s way of making each victory both awesome and Pyrrhic. Or George RR Martin’s epic feel. I could go on and on.  Writing new stuff lets me practice these things over and over, and if I fail it isn’t a teeth-grinding ordeal anymore because I know that I can just try to fail differently (fail better?) next time instead of knowing I now have to spend the next six months of my life editing and rewriting the failed story.

So, how this relates to speed is two-fold.  One, I want to be the best damn writer I’m capable of being at any given point in time.  The more practice I get in, the better I’ll get (hopefully).  Second, I have a crazy brain full of a million things all the time and writing is the best way I’ve found to let off the pressure.  The faster I write, the sooner I’ll finish any one thing and be able to start another, and the more quiet I might gain inside my head.  So between the two, and for my goals, I want to get faster and more consistent.  For me, because that’s the way I work.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to work up to full eight-hour days writing (which would get me 7,500 to 10,000 words done) because I am also crazy about other things like reading and gaming (rpgs and videogames).  But I do hope to be able to consistently write multiple books a year as well as keep a goodly number of shorts circulating.  And I want to keep my level of practice up, because every time I open a book it seems I find some new thing or idea or technique I want to try in my own work.

So basically to sum up:  I want to get faster with my writing because writing lots is how I practice and I want to practice as much as I can (and hopefully someday sell as much as I can, cause hey, this *is* my career, after all).  That’s it, I’m just long-winded at 4am I guess.

Prison Break

Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love disaster.

Last week I got to a point one day where I was just done writing.  Nothing seemed to be working and I was ready to go on vacation again.  So I quit for the day and booted up the xbox and ended up browsing Netflix.  Where I saw that all the seasons of Prison Break were on instant play.  Now, when it was on, I’d never watched this show.  I like some of the actors in it, however, and had heard good things about the first season at least, so I figured I’d just watch an episode or two.  Then I figured the premise would run dry, so I’d just watch the first season.  But I wanted to find out what happened ultimately, so I went to the fourth season and watched the last few episodes of that, too.

Then I got to the end of season 1 and really wanted to see what happened next, even though I know that in the end they are just going to kill off my favorite character.  I know what happens. But I’m still watching.  Each episode I try to tell myself that will be the last one.  But it is like crack. Just one more hit. Then I need one more. And one more.  I sit in front of the show looking for a place to stop watching, a reason to quit.

How is this relevant to writing? Because I’m learning a ton about pacing watching this show.  I want to write books people can’t put down (who doesn’t?).  This show, which I’m not even sure I like that much, won’t let me put it down.  Each episode there are clear goals followed by disaster after disaster.  Nothing goes exactly right, even when the characters are getting what they want.  That’s good.  I mean, I know the end, I know that as a viewer I hate the choices they make at the very end, and I STILL get sucked in by the episode by episode issues.  Scene by scene they won’t let me stop watching.  Partially because the characters are pretty awesomely done, partially because the pacing never lets up.  There just isn’t a good quitting place.

It’s been a good learning experience.  I’m currently working on what I hope is a thriller, and pacing is a big issue for me.  I have issues with putting the torch to the characters at every turn, because writing characters into disaster after disaster just seems mean and it can be really hard to figure out a way to get them out of one situation while keeping the pressure on.  But watching Prison Break, I’m learning how to do that.  I think I understand the try/fail cycle now better than I ever have before, because it is so baldly laid out with no coating in that show.  The very structure of that show is try/fail.  And it works.

So I have a new trick to try in my fiction.  I’ve already started practicing it in the current story I was stuck on.  Instead of having her leave the cabin and nearly get away from the bad guy, she’s going to get stuck in the one place she really shouldn’t be, so that when he returns she’s already cornered.  So far that scene is now working way way better than I had originally envisioned it.  I’m enjoying the process again.  So thanks, Prison Break.  And damn that show. I will stop watching. Soon. Really.  Just one more episode. Or not.

Stuck Again?

Heh, it would figure that I would post about goals and dreams and then… get stuck.  Yeah, it happens.  I don’t get idea block, I get too many ideas and they make it hard to focus.  That is what usually happens when I’m stuck, anyway.

This time is a combination of too many ideas and just plain old self-pity/loathing.  A bunch of rejections came in, every single one of them with the general message “close, but no thanks, please send more”.  This is good on one level.  I’m close!  On the other hand, I’ve been there before.  I don’t want to have a story come close, I want the story to sell.  Close is just frustrating at this point.  The other reason I’m stuck is because I wrote a story that failed.  My writing brain was fighting me the whole process and then I made myself finish the story (and send it out, because I knew if I let anyone read it before I did I would never get the courage to mail it).

What did my first reader say?  “Awesome setting but I don’t care about the characters or what is happening until page 11.”  Ok, I could cut the first ten pages, but wait, it is only a 12 page story.  Yeah. Sigh.  So what I was trying to do didn’t go well.  But hey, setting!  Maybe some editor out there will love the feel of the story enough to ignore the rest.  Who knows?

But inside I feel a bit down.  I wrote a story last week that both my first readers thought was the best thing I’ve done yet.  Then this week, I fail.  It makes getting back on the horse tough.  I’ve made myself start another story and gotten about a thousand words down, but I keep finding reasons to walk away from the keyboard.  Like posting here. And doing house chores.

So I failed at the story I was trying to tell. So what? I need to pick myself up.  It’s just a story. I still have the idea, I can always write a better version knowing what went wrong with the first one.  Meanwhile, I have other projects that have deadlines (at least, the places I want to submit them close very soon, so it is kinda like a deadline).  I can do this.  Write, finish, mail.  Fire and forget.

It’s going to be a scary day when I get up to 80 stories out.  If the stars align, I could technically get 80 rejections in one day.  Yeah. Scary.

(Flip side is that I could also make 80 sales in one day.  I think one is about as likely as the other, so I should stop tilting at windmills and get writing, right?)

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