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Posts Tagged ‘writing problems’

Hard Work Ahead

I’ve been reading over all the comments I’ve ever gotten on my writing.  Between the MFA classes, the editor comments on rejections, and the two con workshops I’ve done (not to mention the great help my friends give as well), that’s actually a ton of feedback.  And I see a pattern, a very annoying pattern.

I think I’m weak at plot.   Not that I don’t grasp what plot is, or that my stories exactly lack it, but the kinds of comments I often get involve the structure of how and why things are happening, or my personal favorite (heh) comment that recurs a lot which is “this would make a great chapter of a novel”.  When my plots are strongest, they reach too far and involve too much for the short story frame.  When they aren’t, well, readers are confused by what’s happening or don’t feel that the ending was satisfying or inevitable.

This means I gotta roll up my proverbial sleeves and work on this.  I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue in my novels since the longer form lends itself to plot development (plus I outline constantly with novels).   My short stories need work.  I’m not going to worry too much about the ones already written.  They are what they are and if I can patch them up I will, but going forward with the next few shorts, I’m going to work damn hard on making the structure sound.  There are plenty of formulas for plot out there.  I don’t tend to follow them, instead letting the story develop on its own.  Maybe I’ve strayed too far, however. Clearly something isn’t working because my stories are getting the “close but no” response.  The comments from others hint that it might be plotting issues.

The good news is that this is something I think will be reasonably easy to fix.  It’s just going to take me staying mindful of where a story is going.  I think the next few short stories I’m going to do mini-outlines for, same as I do for my novels just on a smaller scale.   I’ll probably outline scene by scene and see what results. I may also try to fit some of my ideas to plot structures (likable hero overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds, or hero tries, makes it worse, tries and fails even worse, then finally succeeds, or one of those formulas that abound out there for story structure).

It’s weird.  I used to hate writing dialogue and I felt like every character I had sounded the same.  I started working hard to build characters up and get my dialogue to sound normal.  Soon enough, I started getting comments on stories that my dialogue and characterization were great.  Then it was that my beginnings were always rough.  So I started working on beginnings (still am, I think beginnings will always be rough for me since I tend to write my way into the story).   Sometimes I feel like my writing is this monstrous creation.  I poke at the weaker parts and build them up, then realize that other parts are now weaker and my monster is lopsided again.  So I poke at those parts, rinse, repeat.  It looks like plotting is the next weak limb that needs beefing up.

The novel is progressing.  I reread a few chapters (and ended up doing some line editing since eeks I’m wordy in my rough drafts) and am part way into the next chapter.  I’m guessing I’ll finish somewhere close to 100k words, maybe a little over since I’ve got some scenes to add to help weave it all together.  I’m rebuilding my writing momentum and optimistically hope that I can get back up to a chapter a day by the end of the week.  I need to sit down with the outline tomorrow and update it with the new scenes I’m imagining for the end of each of the upcoming chapters.  It’s tough to split the main characters up since the main plot right now only pertains to one of them, but I think as a reader I’d want to know what’s going on with the other two during this time, plus I need to show the passage of time since three years are about to pass but for the main character it’s going to seem more like a few weeks.  I can do this.  I’ve passed the half-way point, deep into the murky middle of the story.  It’s a linear story, no real twists or turns here, just a horrible climax to build to and a bittersweet ending.  Head down, keep writing.

Novel is Stuck!

Another friendly rejection bringing total to 16, 484 left to go.

I’ve started work on Chwedl again and have realized why I quit in the first place.  I’ve written my character into a situation where there are no good outs.  Every solution I can think of involves either a little hand-waving, or her getting outside help.  While it is very in keeping with the fairytale motif to have her helped by ravens or selkies or whatever, I want her to stand out as clever and resourceful.  That means not waiting around for something to present an easy solution for her.

The good news is I opened the question of what to do to my facebook friends (go go gadget internet) and I think I see the underlying problem now.  She wasn’t clever at all at the beginning when she was assigned this task and didn’t ask the right questions.  So… rewriting!  It’s amazing how many of my writing plot issues are solved through going back and fixing earlier stupid.  Now, to think about how to keep the Fey character realistic in her answers since she’s going to be as squirrely as possible but anything she says has to be the truth (though not, of course, the whole truth).

Woo, I think I solved it!  In the process of writing this post I think I came up with a solution that lets everyone be exactly who they are and still makes it tough for my main character without making it impossible or super tedious (who wants to read an entire chapter of a person sorting rocks? I don’t really want to write it either…).

I read an interview with Jay Lake over at SF Signal (full is here) where he mentions that novels take courage.  I totally agree.  I love writing short stories.  I get to jump in and then be done before I have to worry too much about things.  I can tinker with a short story through 10 drafts if I want and it won’t take me years.  Novels are different.  So many threads to hang onto, characters to keep consistent, words to read over…  I’m trying to be brave.  I want to tell this story, to finish this novel and get it right.  This is my second attempt at a novel.  I don’t know if I’ll get it right, but I know at least that I can finish something of length.  It’s a start.

All right, now that I’ve blogged my way unstuck, it’s time to go change stones into boulders and rewrite a conversation.

It may take courage, but damn, my day job doesn’t suck.

Little by Little

I’m well into chapter 3 now. The set up is going slowly. I can’t wait for this part to be over. Another three or four chapters and the plot will have taken shape. From there it will be just writing my characters running headlong into peril after peril. That part I’m looking forward to. The setup? Not as much. I’m working hard on the characterizations and descriptions. Which means I’ll likely have to cull a great deal from this in the later edits, but for now I’d rather include the kitchen sink (and its five paragraph description) than wonder what I’m missing later.

In the last week I’ve had no less than three people ask me what I’m doing for a living now. It feels awkward to say “writing” because I’m not exactly making money at it yet. If you count my editing and freelance writing work from the past, I’ve technically made money doing it, however, so it sort of counts, right? And I am writing now with the goal of publication and monies in the future. I’ve no other paid work at the moment. So I nervously answered “writing” to all of them. No one questioned it. Which probably means I should stop questioning it too.

However, my trying to write full time led to a fight with a sibling. She was in town and so I took a day off to see her. She then wanted me to take another day and drive her some places (which would have taken the whole day). I refused. Driving for hours at a time eats a lot of energy. I knew that if I did this, it would mean no writing got done that day. I’ve been working hard to make sure I spend at least a few hours everyday working on the novel. This is my job now. If I’m going to have a draft done by the time classes start, I can’t really put off writing too much. There are already many things scheduled (like PAX 2008 this weekend) that will take away writing days.

I tried to explain this to my sister. I carefully explained that I had to work. She didn’t get it. She figured I could just take whatever time I wanted since I’m unemployed. Eventually I gave up trying to explain how I wasn’t really unemployed, just self-employed (which is how I see it, despite the no incoming money yet thing). It didn’t end so well.

I have a feeling this is only the first in a line of battles to guard my time and have my writing life taken seriously to the people around me. Once I’m published, perhaps, they’ll truly understand. But I’m not sure they can, being non-writers, understand the sheer volume of work that is writing a good novel. It’s hard. It’s really fucking hard. Maybe it isn’t for everyone, but it is for me. Writing takes a great deal of mental energy and lots of time. I can spend ten hours working on something and end up with only a couple hundred usable words. And unlike most jobs where you have bosses and coworkers and such, if I don’t do the work, it doesn’t get done. No one is going to write my novel for me. The more time I spend not writing, the longer it will be until I can expect any kind of compensation. This is how it works, for me.

Little by little. I have to guard my time. Writing is my job, and as such, I have to make sure I take it seriously. I don’t want to dabble. This isn’t a hobby. I want to write for a living and the only way I know how to do it is to actually write.

My Writing Issues Part 2 (Million)

As always when I’m reading other writers’ blogs, reading writing forums, or even just comments on my own blogs, the differences between myself and other amateur writers strike me. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of similarities. I think having self-doubts and times of uncertainty and difficulty with the creative process comes pretty much packaged with the territory. But I also have problems that have nothing to do with this doubt, this overriding uncertainty. (Well, not more than anything that is directly tied together via my brains can be unrelated).

So, common writing issues I don’t have:

Voice- I gots one. All my writing sounds like me. Sometimes it all sounds a bit too much alike, which is something I’m working on. My writing has a surreal tone to it, however. I’m good with that, though I am working on varying character more.

Ideas- I has them. Many writers often complain about getting the question of “where do you get your ideas from?” constantly. I don’t think I’ll ever ask someone this question. In fact, I’d put ideas under problems in some ways. I have too many. I don’t know if I will ever get all the stories inside me out onto a page in coherent fashion. Some of the ideas are no more than an image, a quick clip of film in my head, or perhaps a character standing alone on the black screen of my mind. (She’s there right now, dripping blood all over everything from a pretty nasty looking gash in her left arm. Don’t know who she is, but someday I will.) I don’t think I’ve ever had writer’s block in the traditional sense. The ideas are always there. I always have images and stories in my mind to work with.

Internal Editor- Not really a problem. During NaNoWriMo I love to read the forums even when I’m not participating. People constantly whine about not knowing how to turn off the internal editor. I found NaNo to be no issue at all because I’m pretty sure turning on my internal editor is the hard part. My novel might have gone better if I’d been listening the quiet voice inside of me instead of rabidly smashing words into the computer.

Getting Discouraged- It happens. It also isn’t a huge problem. I tend to decide I’m going to quit forever about once a month. Like my wrath, this feeling generally passes within minutes, often followed by another stream of those plaguey ideas. In fact, if anything discourages me it is the flow of ideas around me constantly. I feel like a cheetah stuck in a stampeding herd of zebra. Too many ideas, too many images. So hard to choose just one to bring down and bleed out. That can be quite discouraging. And sure, I never know if I’ll be good enough to satisfy myself. I write because something inside me compels me to do so. I don’t think I could stop, I’ve certainly never been successful at stopping in the past.

Those seem to be the main issues people write about with writing. So many books are dedicated to helping beginning writers work through these issues.

And now, writing issues I do have.

I think in images. And not just silent paintings moving through my head, but I mean full sensory images that I can see, touch, taste, hear, smell. Sometimes they are as real to me as the world around me. Sometimes they become almost a part of the world around me. (A lifetime of dealing with them has trained me to distinguish most of the time, and boy does my sanity thank me. Also, so do people who drive with me in my car *grin*). The flow is often fast, more of a flood swollen river than a lazy summer stream. It can be hard for me to get full pictures before things move past me and other voices and worlds crowd in for attention. I don’t always have the full story, the how and why of it. My writing shows this. I think that this is often one of its huge weaknesses. It’s clear in my rough drafts that I don’t always know the why behind the what, so things are flatter than they could be. To me this is a problem inherent in the translation of things. I have to take the ideas from my head and put them into words. Image to language. This is, for me, an actually physically painful process sometimes. I get huge headaches if I’m pushing things too hard. Then comes frustration and the delete key. (Used to be fire. I’ve burned many stories and plays). Training myself as a translator between my head and my writing is an ongoing and scary part of it. Getting the images to communicate themselves the way I see them is difficult. I struggle with this constantly. I’m not sure I’ll ever have it perfect, and yeah, that frustrates me daily.

My hatred of editing my own work. I really do starve and kick my internal editor. I’m perfectly capable of editing other people’s work. Editing while translating/writing, however, is really hard for me. I require a lot of distance and input on my own work before I can ever begin to process how to improve it beyond grammar and basics. Fortunately lately I’ve had a few people willing to read my stuff and offer good feedback. It is starting to smooth the editing process. I’m going to work on letting the editor out while I’m writing on this novel rewrite. This is definitely an area I could improve on.

Characters not ideas. Right now my characters tend to fall into pretty archetypal categories. Some of this is because I keep writing based on themes or images I get and not with the characters themselves as the focus. Part of this can likely be blamed on 7 years of college studying archetypes and themes. I’m working on getting into the heads of my characters more, of dragging it out of them instead of just letting them tell me whatever they think I need to know and leaving the rest obscure. I’m not sure characterization will ever be one of my strong suits, sadly. I hope that I’ll have some sort of breakthrough eventually on how to write the kind of unique and memorable characters I love to read about. This is definitely up there on my ‘worries about my writing’ list.

So there you have it. Those are the main issues I have with my writing and with the writing process. (Also known as the post where I use the word ‘issues’ way too many times, gah.)

Productivity Is Overrated

I haven’t written a single thing all week except to jot down a few notes here and there for my novels. In terms of life though, I’ve been very productive, so I suppose it’s a trade-off. I built my shelves, finally. All that remains for my office to be complete is for my old computer to get raided for its information (such as my first novel that needs edits) and for the new computer to be fully installed with the programs I need. I’d like this to get done by the end of next week. I’ve been using it as an excuse not to do much in the way of writing. It’s a poor excuse.

I’m a tomorrow person. I know this, and I do what I can to work around the constant desire to just “do it tomorrow”. Actually, I did get some writing-ish stuff done, since I managed to get some comic things sent off to my artist. However, it’s not really as much as I’d hoped. So for next week I’m setting some goals. I will meet these goals. They aren’t that lofty or interesting, but I have to get going. Once I have momentum, it will take care of itself, but I’ve been putting things off too long.

Weekend goals: Finish review of Cooking Mama for my friend’s website. Rework Predators plot outline (I’ve had some different ideas, so I’m going to rewrite it).

Next week’s goals: 10 pages of Predators. At least 10 pages of Chwedl written. Type up and edit first layer of Past Dark. Finish Bad Day comic (I can do this in one day, I just have to buckle down and do it).

I’d love to be doing a chapter of each book a week, but it isn’t going to happen. I should be realistic about things and put off Predators until I’ve got Chwedl done and ready for first round of readers. Then I could buckle down and get Predators done in time to be sent out once they’ve gotten back to me about Chwedl. I may do this. But I want to get the outline done at least. We’ll see. I may have too much project on my plate. Fortunately for me, it takes me far less time to write pages and pages of comic than it does for my poor artist to concept and draw the stuff up. I can get layers ahead of her in a day or two without a problem, so I’m not worried about her outpacing me in terms of the comic.

So that’s the story of this week. Exciting, isn’t it? I’ll be more productive. You know, tomorrow. But hey, shelves! My to-read shelf has 58 books on it.

Excuses and The Writer’s Space

So, I have two novel outlines. I have a brand new computer. I haven’t done anything in a week.

I’ve been using the “no access to my dead harddrive” excuse in order to not work on the ‘Dangerous’ editing/rewrite. It’s a problem I could fix just by poking the people who have computer know-how and making them boot my drive with their magic computer powers. Instead I keep letting them get distracted with things like work, school, and Jade Empire.

I’ve been using the excuse of not getting much sleep and then being out of town to avoid working on my novels. These excuses are poor and thin. I keep letting people distract me or making other plans and my writing time slowly disappears. I’ve used the same excuses to avoid writing on the two comics I’m working on.

Solution? I think I’m going to have to be a little more stubborn about writing time. Which means saying no to friends who want to do things during the day. And recognizing my own excuses for what they are. My plan for the rest of this week is to get my office set up again and get comic bits sent off to my artist so she has something to work on as well.

I have a lot of books. This means that my office, which is the place in my home I can go to close away the outside world and its distractions, is currently full of books with very little extra space. I went to Ikea and got new shelves for the rearranging of the office, so the books should get off the floor and where they belong soon. Having space is important. Having a working computer that isn’t shared is also important. I like to close myself away to write. I need to be able to put on music, lock the door, arrange my notebooks and research around myself, and turn the eyes inward towards the mindscape of my stories. It’s vital to my writing process. I don’t understand those people who can write in cafes or pizza parlours or bars. People are too interesting, I like to watch them too much. There is no way I can be around them and still interacting on a meaningful level with the things in my head.

I’ve only lost a week to excuses. Sometimes having no deadlines isn’t actually a blessing. Well, I suppose I do have a deadline, but it’s so far away, it feels unreal. If I don’t get on this now, however, December will have come all too quickly. I’ll post the first couple paragraphs of both novels by the end of next week. There, that’s sort of like a deadline. Time to get my room in order, both the real one and the one in my head.