The More You Know...

So, I was catching up on my blog reading the other day and came across this post by Natalie Whipple - Have You Seen My Confidence Lately? It Ran Off. I read it, and went - wow, have I been there. The last year-and-a-bit has been one big long episode of I-have-no-confidence. Other than the fact that I was sick for at least 3/4 of last year, which seriously screwed with my mental abilities, for some reason, finishing Sanctuary was like holding up a metal rod to the Electrical Storm of Doubt.

Which is stupid, because Sanctuary was the easiest book I've ever written - less than 3 months, start to finish, which for me is pretty jolly awesome. Especially since I had a sisterous wedding and started working full time in the middle of that.

But for some bizarre reason, that's kind of WHY I started freaking out over writing. After writing a book that was so easy, all of a sudden everything else I tried to write seemed hard. Yeah, okay, I was spiralling into health-induced depression too, but it was more than that. It was like I developed this fear that if something was hard to write, it must be awful - and since everything was hard to write, clearly everything I was writing was awful.

So I didn't. And then what with dealing with the health issues and whatnot, by the time I had *brain* again to start writing, I felt like I was back at the very beginning again, trying to convince myself that I really truly could write a first draft, and that no, it didn't matter if it was terrible (only it did, because by now, I'd totally failed at my first attempt to revise Jesscapades too, which added to everything else the lingering suspicion that I'd never actually be able to fix any of my drafts).

Slowly, slooooooowly, I got back into the swing of things, and started rewriting Jesscapades. And then I went and decided to grow a parasitical minion inside my own body, which sapped all my available brainpower :P

But the other day, I came across this awesome wiki article. I can't remember how I stumbled on it, but it really hit the spot, and although it's an appeal to the logic circuits rather than the emotional centre, I found it really quite comforting. It's about the Dunning-Kruger effect, which in essence boils down to that lovely pithy truism, "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." I.e., the more proficient you become at something, the more likely you are to think you suck, because you assume EVERYONE has that base level of proficiency, and you can see full well just how far you fall short of perfect.

How is that comforting? Well, it means that if I'm doubting my ability, I'm objectively speaking more likely to actually be competent in that area. If I'm sailing along thinking everything is fantastic and that I am amazing, it's most likely that I simply don't realise just how crap I am. So doubt is awesome, because it means we're on the right track. As long as we don't let it overcome us, of course.

And you know what? I think I actually have improved. I picked up Jesscapades again last night, because I'm determined to fix the thing by hook or by crook... And, yes, there's stuff that still doesn't work - but there are things that do. I haven't fixed all the problems - but I've fixed some.

So next time you start feeling dismal about your own work - remember to take a break, and read about the Dunning-Kruger effect *grin*

In Which I Pep Talk

I really just need a blog post to ramble in today, and this is it. I've been stalling on HH edits all week, because I'm doing lessons 11/12, and they're HARD WORK. How dare writing be hard work, hey? But, you know, I've been out and about, and my back has been giving me fits of nausea, and I was in tears when the Boyo massaged it last night because it hurt so much - so I have an excuse not to have been working on edits, right?

Yeah. Not really.

Because really, none of those things are what has been stopping me. If I'd been at a fun point in the process, I'd have made time to get the edits done, regardless of what else had been going on during the day. I'd have prioritised it.

I kind of suck at prioritising this week.

But it's making me think, even as I procrastinate. I'm thinking about priorities and procrastination and deadlines and dreams and goals. If I ever want to get anywhere with this writing gig, it's up to me to do it. No one is going to drag me, kicking and screaming, though edits. Well, maybe Liana. But no one else.

And no one but me is really going to be disappointed if I don't 'make it' as a writer. No one else really cares whether I finish a particular story or not, whether I edit this novel or that, whether I publish in the end or not. That's where this writing gig of ours is a solo endeavour.

It's all very well to have people to help motivate you, but in the end, if you can't motivate yourself, you're doomed.

No one else cares about my dreams, so I have to. Because if don't, they'll die.

If I'm okay with that, then probably my dreams weren't really Dreams in the first place. Because a real dream catches you and won't let go. Like the times where I've decided to give writing a rest, to give up on it - and I find myself at odd moments planning stories, plotting through problems, listening to the voices in my head.

Writing is a Dream of mine. No one can make me reach my dream. I have to get off my butt and do it myself.

No one is going to edit the novel for me; no one is even going to step forward and offer to do this one hard lesson for me.

I need to quit making excuses, and do. Stop fretting over the end result, the eventual outcomes, other people's opinions of what I'm doing - and do.

The writing won't be done until I do.

So, I'm going to go do.

Thanks for listening to my self-pep-talk. :)

Why Do We Care?

Feedback: it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, writers generally long for feedback on their work - some sense of encouragement, an external recognition of progress. On the other, we dread it; what if someone hates it? What if we've just wasted two thousand words? Ten thousand?

Actually, I've done that before. I wrote the 'first' 10k of a novel called Logan's Prize, and realised that really, the interesting stuff happened in chapter eleven. I had a friend read over it, and they agreed; the first ten chapters were filler, backstory, uninteresting and unimportant. Ouch. So I dropped the story.

(Of course, being as tenacious as I am, I refuse to ever really give up on a story; I still have Plans for that one, bwa ha, and yes, they do include using some of that 10k that I've written).

But back to the point. Although one of the things that determines how quick a story will be written is me (surprise surprise), an unfortunately large amount also rests on the shoulders of my alpha readers. You see, I don't like first drafts. Not really. Sanctuary was, sadly, an exception that proved the rule. First drafts are ugly, and messy, and broken, and even when you finish them you just know you have so much more work to do. And invariably, there are Teh Hatez that happen somewhere around the middle, where you realise the beginning was all wrong and the story would be so much stonger if only THAT had happened instead, and while you could just keep writing and pretent that THAT had happened, wouldn't it be so much nicer to go back and fix it while you still remember what you want to fix?

And so you stop, meaning to go back, but you never do. Yup, done that too.

It seems I need readers to carry me through that phase, to remind me that progress is progress no matter how small, that finishing is a worthy goal in and of itself, quality aside. NaNoWriMo's great for that. So are alpha readers.

So what do you do when, for one reason or another, you can't have alphas? More to the point, what do I do?

That's not a rhetorical question; it's something I'm up against right now. Borderlands refuses to be written linearly. It has two timelines, one of which isn't chronological, and the scenes are all over the place. I know I need to let go of my need to write things In Order and just let the book be written - but doing that means sacrificing the ability to post to my alpha reader/s every time I finish a scene, because I do want them to read it in order after all.

So I'm stuck, right at this minute, between doing what I know I need to do and not being able to share it with my support team, and forcing myself to do it the wrong way just so I can feel better about myself.

We know which way I'll go, of course; I need the book written as well as it can be, not just written for the sake thereof.

But it's going to be a tough slog.

So tell me: how do you keep yourself motivated to write when no one else can do it for you?

Q4U: Climbing Back On the Horse

So, it's been a while since I've written. About four weeks, in fact. It's not that I haven't thought about it - it's been plaguing me. The general need to write, stories in particular - heck, even my dreams have been writing related!

But the problem is, none of this adds up to actual writing - and I can't seem to make it. I'm tired, worn out by life and all its current woes, and when I pull up the page to write, it just doesn't seem to work.


Image from Stock Xchange

HNOT is staring at me. It only needs another 20k to be complete, which I could totally do in a month - if I could get myself started. I think I'm afraid to ruin the tone I've set up, and scared off by a lot of plot problems pointed out by a beta reader.

Borderlands also stares, as does the temporarily-titled Battersplotch world (this is the one that keeps popping up in dreams). But because HNOT is staring harder, I can't bring myself to start something completely new; too many partially completed drafts.

I have brain freeze, and it's getting seriously annoying.

So, my question for the day to you all is this: After a long break away from writing, how do you get back on the horse again? What do you do to ease yourself back into routine, to convince yourself once more that it does actually matter if you write or not? Any tips for me? Because this is seriously driving me nuts.

Thanks, in advance. You guys are awesome B-)

Commitment

As this post - er, posts, I will be primping my hair, having my face painted and putting on shiny shoes and a lustrous dress - in other words, I'll be getting dressed for my sister's wedding. How excitement! O:)

Also, on Friday it is my own wedding anniversary; and there are at least 3 other couples I can think of off the top of my head who we are friends with who have wedding anniversaries this week.* So clearly, it's Commitment Week! Huzzah!

Commitment Week? I hear you say with undue scepticism. What does Commitment Week have to do with writing?

Ah, I say with a knowing smile. Allow me to elaborate.

It's quite simple, really. In order to be a writer, you have to be committed to the act of writing. It's not enough to just talk about writing, to want to be a writer, to have great ideas and hang out with writers. You have to actually write. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward.

Superficially.

Like a relationship, really. To have a successful relationship, all you need to do is love each other and communicate, and you're sweet. Simple as that.

Uh huh, reeeeeeeal simple.

But having a commitment to writing is much like having a commitment in a relationship. After all, you have your ups and downs, your good days and your bad days, your lovey-dovey moments where everything is great and you've never felt so inspired and oh my goodness your feet are just walking on air the words keep coming and coming and coming...

Aaaaand there are the days where, seriously? You'd rather bash your head with significant force against a brick wall than go home. I mean, write. O:)

Like any relationship, it's the knowledge that the bad times will get better, and the knowledge that this is a decision you made, that gets you through.

Coincedently, a good friend of mine is also having a commitment crisis right now; she's questioning her commitment to writing. She feels like she hasn't written seriously in a couple of months and is wondering whether she either needs to get a move on with writing or admit that she's quit.

At this point, let me point out that she has, in actual fact, written 25k in the last two months, which for some of us is phenomenal. But for her, it's less than up to par. And it's left her feeling unproductive and uncommitted.

So what's a writer to do?

First of all, something I'm having to learn in all areas of my life, one day at a time: Life isn't all or nothing.

It's not a matter of do something perfectly or don't do it all. It isn't a case of wash all 3 million dishes or don't touch them. It's actually okay to just wash the first few hundred thousand and save the rest for later. It isn't that you need to teach every single class perfectly and to an outstanding standard. It's enough to get most of them right.

It isn't that you have to write a thousand words every single day come rain, come hail, come shine - come illness, come death, come exhaustion, come work, come study, come family, come life.

It isn't. It really isn't.

Going through the mechanical motions of writing because you have to will give you about as much success as going through the motions in any other relationship - which is to say, you'll quite probably get results that look good from the outside, but you run the very serious risk of losing the heart of your work.

In writing, taking a break doesn't mean giving up. Having a month of lowered productivity - or two, or three - doesn't mean giving up. And having days where you don't write doesn't mean giving up either.

I counted them up in talking to said friend: So far this month I've written a mere 11 out of 23 days. In December, I had 19 days where I didn't write. September and October boasted 12 days each of no writing, and in August I didn't write for 17 days.

Life happens.

Things get in the way of writing.

It's up to you whether or not that will break your commitment to writing, or whether you'll give yourself permission to go at the pace you need, and accept what productivity you can get.

Life isn't all or nothing - and neither is writing. And it's a proven fact that stress lowers creativity, so taking the pressure to perform away can actually boost your productivity (like my September).

Do what you can. Write what you can, when you can. And most importantly, as for everything in life, Know Yourself. Know whether your behaviour is laziness and lack of commitment, or whether it's life getting in the way. And feeling unmotivated to write isn't an indicator either way - you can feel unmotivated because you're lazy, or because you're exhausted.

It's okay for writing not to be your number 1 priority, even if you are aiming for publication; sure paper can keep you warm at night, but it's not as cosy as your family ;)

In the end:

Commitment. It's all in your head. Which means it's up to you.

:)

It's Only My Opinion

The rise of the internet has often been heralded as the rise of the common man. No longer are news, literature, and written communication in all its more general forms something that remain the exclusive domain of the rich, famous, or well-eductated. These days, anyone can - and does - have a say.

Nobodies can rise to fame in a matter of hours via youtube; authors who otherwise wouldn't stand a chance can develop a sales base through blogging and social networking.

Everyone can have a say.

The internet is a remarkable beast, one to which I owe a hearty portion of my life - keeping in contact with family and friends, finding support groups for my writing habits, devouring news and information - but all this makes me wonder: What's the value of an opinion?

In the days where anyone can have an opinion, where everyone is entitled to one, where any person can preach from the metaphorical rooftops and garner a following - what is such an opinion worth?

As writers, too often a large portion of our self esteem rests on what others think of us. Actually, that's true of everyone, regardless of occupation. A mentoring seminar I once attended gave the self esteem equation thusly:

Your Self Esteem = what YOU think people you CARE about THINK about YOU.

Convoluted, but totally true.

Writing is hard. Writing in a vacuum is really hard. I couldn't get to the end of my novels without the love and support and writing cookies and knocks on the head with admonishments to quit whining and write of my critique group - and they are all online.

But what about the critics? Not Critics, people who critique (or criticise, depending on your opinion :D) things for a living, but critics - the ones who live to tear people down. And yes, they can be the same thing :D And what's more, they can be unintentional.

In the age of the internet where everyone can not only hold an opinion, but can publish it to a wide audience too, someone, somewhere, is bound to make a hurtful remark about your writing at some point. Someone, somewhere, is bound to not only dislike it, but hate it - and they'll tell people about it.

What's the value of an opinion?

To whom do we entrust our self esteem?

Everyone can publish an opinion, whether they are trained in their field of critique or not. Does the level of education lend weight to the opinion? Someone who is uneducated in a field can be equally perceptive as someone who is; someone educated in a field can be just as ignorant in it as someone not.

What's the value of education?

Whose opinions matter?

I'm throwing these questions out here with little intent to answer them. The answers differ for everyone, for every situation; there's no one-size-fits-all. There rarely is, in life.

But the opinion of the people you trust matters to you. So what can you do about it?

Who do you trust? It's up to you.

Balance

Wow. This post has been sitting in 'drafts' for... well, a Really Long Time Now. I glance at it every now and then, just to remember that it's actually there, but I don't really think about it.

Today, I realised it's exactly what I've been looking for.

You see, I've been blogging a bit sporadically lately. I'm in the midst of prac, and while I'm busting to the brim with new ideas, none of them are really relevant to this blog.

And of course, I'm a perfectionist. A blog post has to be meaty; I have to feel like I've actually said something in it.

Hence, sporadic posting.

I've been writing a lot - I'm up to a bit over 7k for the month already - but I honestly believed that I had nothing to say about writing; I had nothing to blog about.

I was wrong.

So today: Balance.

Authors are always at risk of losing balance. We really buy into the idea that if we read enough blogs, or belong to enough crit groups, or talk to enough other authors we will somehow find that magic key and get published.

It's a nice thought. But nice don't buy rice... (Randomly, anyone know where that saying comes from?)

There IS no secret key to getting published. Rather, it's a mix of time, effort, and a chunk of luck.

I'm being reminded of this a lot this week, because I'm working on short stories again. I haven't done shorts for quite a while now, and I was missing the feedback that submitting gives - even if it is just rejections.

But that's exactly the point, it's where luck and timing comes in: I, like every other writer who submits I'm QUITE sure, have plenty of stories that have received multiple rejections before they were accepted. The most I have for any one story is only 5 right now - and that's chicken feed. And the stories that have placed certainly haven't been my favourite stories that I've written - I just happened to hit the right market at the right time with a story that resonated with them.

I want to relate this back to balance. How? Because as writers, we have obsessive, perfectionist tendencies. I certainly do. We go through phases of hating our story, our writing in general, and sometimes even ourselves because we haven't yet stumbled on the magical bit of timing that we need.

We rail against ourselves when we can't 'get it together' and perform miracles; when we can't somehow be the Magic Household Fairy, the Dedicated Working Wo/Man, the Bestselling Author AND Sane (!) all at the same time.

We're impatient.

We're impatient, we're scared, and sometimes we're lazy too.

Writing is hard work. It's terrifying work, because we expose so much of ourselves in the process.

And it takes time.

We're not superhumans with special powers; we're just humans with imaginations. We can't run the clock.

But we shouldn't let the clock run us, either.

So today, right now, let's make a committment together: tell me one thing that you're going to commit to enjoying, sometime this week, just for yourself. And tell me one thing that you're going to make a conscious effort to stop ragging at yourself about.

Me, I'm going to slow down and enjoy some yoga, and I'm going to stop telling myself that my worth as a human being is defined by how many dirty dishes there are in the sink.

How about you?

Breakthrough

It’s been a while since I blogged (ha, I could so just end that sentence there!) about Holly Lisle’s Think Sideways course. Not because I fell out of love with it, not because it suddenly sucked – but because it went faster than I did. I ‘finished’ the course a month ago, and I’d read everything in it – but I hadn’t applied it.

Usually, it isn’t until you apply stuff that you get those gorgeous ‘Eureka!’ moments, where things crystallise and become clear, and you fall in love again.

Yup, it’s middle time. I’m a squeak away from the halfway point in Jesscapdes, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about my way of writing a novel, it’s that the closer I get to the ending, the more scenes ahead I need to have mapped out.

When I start writing, I’m pretty content to go with just a vague – ok, this, then maybe this, and probably this is what will change things in the middle, and it might end like that. By the end of act one (usually between 7 and 12 chapters in), I start outlining a few scenes ahead, so I always know what’s going to happen in the next handful of chapters.

By halfway, it’s time to break out the index cards and have a serious, midstream re-think. The story’s big enough to have gravity, it’s alive enough to have morphed away from my initial plan a little, and it needs tweaking. By now, there are things happening in the beginning which I just know won’t work with where the story needs to go – and I can’t move on until I’ve fixed them. Interestingly, Lisa Shearin shares how she hits a similar point at about 3/4s of the way through.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I go back and edit. If I did that, I’d never finish. I just pretend to edit. I redo the outline, so I know what the story ought to look like by this point, and I keep going. Now, to be honest, the middles section of the Think Sideways course was my least favourite, and for Jesscapdes I used a different model. But now that I’m there, now that I’ve plotted well past the middle and am sniffing the ending – well, my brain needs to know what it is.

So I broke out month five of Think Sideways, and got to work. And man, I am here to tell you, this is why I love this course. I spent a couple of hours yesterday working through the lessons on how to find your ending, and I am so excited. The day before, I hated my story. I hadn’t written in over a week, the story felt like rubbish, the ideas stale, the characters flat... I hated it with all the passion of being-stuck-in-the-middle-of-the-first-draft.

But thanks to Think Sideways and the lessons on story gravity (how to find all the promises you’ve made to the readers in the story) and on how to find the RIGHT ending for your story (pulling together all of those promises without being trite, or lame, or boring or predictable) – wow. I am so excited.

And I remember why I like themes: because even though I’m the one writing the story, I learn something about life every time. Today’s lesson, brought to you by the Theme of Jesscapades: There are some things in life you just have to fight, even if the rules say otherwise.

So, here’s to endings, and being over halfway through the book! *hefts glass* :)

PS - Hoorah! I finally have internet back on at home! Here's also to more regular blogging! :D

The Danger of Gold Stars

Last week or the week before we discussed why we write. Mostly, it appears, we write for ourselves. It's something we'd do even if we knew we'd never get published (affirmed by a poll on Critique Circle a few months ago).

We're writers; we write.

We also write because we have something to say that we think is of value. I make no secret of the fact that I want my writing to be meaningful, even life-changing ('though to only a small degree is enough) - and yet I still don't understand why. Why do I want to make a difference, and how exactly do I think writing fiction will do that? It's something I'm still exploring, and for now I have no answers.

However, there was another reason that came up that I can discuss right now. It's writing for self-affirmation, or, as one reader put it, writing for gold stars.

Is there anything wrong with wanting public affirmation of your talent, your thoughts, and, inevitably in writing, your self?

No.

Is there anything wrong with that being the entire (or primary) reason you write?

Yes.

Materialism can cause low self-esteem, but here's a newsflash: so can relying on other people's opinions. In any course in life, but particularly in the writing business, putting all your hopes in gold stars can be dangerous. Writing is a brutal game, and if your self esteem is completely tied to your work, then even time someone rejects your work, you'll feel like they're rejecting you - and that can lead you to an unpleasant place.

A leadership/mentoring seminar I once attended described self esteem like this:

Self esteem = what you think people you respect think of you.

Read it again. It's what you think others that you respect think of you. If that's the case, then how do you have any control over it? Can you ever control your own self esteem, or are you doomed to dependence on those around you? If your work is one of the more important aspects of your self, and other reject it, how can you ever have a good self esteem?

Look at the equation closely. There is one aspect you can control.

Mostly, you can't control what you think other people think. You get that impression from their actions, their words, and their general attitude. Sure, sometimes we can get it wrong, but on the whole, it's pretty hard to convince yourself that someone likes you when they're making it obvious that they don't.

What you can control is found in the key phrase, 'who you respect'. People whom you have no respect for aren't important to you; their opinions don't matter. So how to you take control of your self esteem?

Choose carefully who you will respect.

Have standards. Require those whose input you receive to meet those standards (though don't be perfectionistically impossible, naturally!!). And don't make the mistake of thinking that because one person has respectable opinions in one area, they will in another: I can tell you what I think of your writing, but please don't ask me to tell you if you're a good basketball player or not.

Which brings us back to writing.

Although much of what you put into your writing comes from you, ultimately, it isn't you. When you ask people for criticism of your work - or when they give it to you anyway - you're not asking them to critique YOU. They're qualified to crit your work; they're not qualified (mostly) to crit you.

Learn to dissociate yourself from criticism - or writing for publication is going to be an arduous slog (which it is anyway) that will break you in the end.

Unsticking The Project

Yes, you're getting an overload of posts this week :) I do hope that's okay with you. I'm running on the theory that it's making up for all the weeks I've missed posts O:)

It's about now that I'm due to do a Think Sideways: Month Three review. I'll do that properly some time next week, but for now, I need to squee a bit :D

For the last month, I have been majorly stuck on The Project. I've forced a few chapters out, because I felt I should, but I'm well and truly in the mire of the middle. I'm sick of the whole thing: the plot seems contrived, the characters I know are thin, and I just can't see the point of plugging through the first draft when the final product is going to be so rubbish.

Enter Think Sideways, week 13.

The title, most appropriately, is "Can't I Just Kill Them All? How To Fall In Love With Your Novel A Second Time." Boy, was this what I needed this week.

Oddly, one of the main things I got out of it was something I've read before in Holly's free workshops; but it's something that bears repeating. If you're stuck, it's usually for a reason; listen to what your muse is trying to say.

In my case, dear Musey is sick of writing about characters that neither of us like or care about. Heather is flat, boring, and undeveloped. I knew that. This story was an exercise in creating a plot (much like TBAEO turned out to be an exercise in character), and I realised very early on that I had no idea who Heather was; but I kept writing anyway.

Now, in the mirey middle, that strategy isn't working any more.

But now, thanks to Think Sideways, I know how to fix it. I know how to retrace my steps to the point where things were last working well, and I know how I'm going to write the ensuing chapter differently this time.

And this time, it's going to work.

I think I might just have fallen in love again :)

Always Do Something - Another Reason To Nano

If you're looking for one more reason to do Nano, here it is. In their book Art and Fear, Bayles and Orland discuss the principle of quantity over quality. The relevant bit is quoted on the webpage, and goes like this:

"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay. "

Right now, I'm struggling through a first draft. I HATE first drafts with a passion that sometimes makes me wonder why I'm doing this whole writing thing. First drafts SUCK because they are never, ever, EVER perfect - and I'm a perfectionist.

When we're stuck in the quagmire of an imperfect first draft - or caught in the death grips of editing, for those of you that hate that bit of the process - it's so easy to lose sight of what we love about writing. It's so easy to fall back into the default position - everything I write is terrible, I'm no good at this, I think I'll quit.

Don't. Quit.

Every word you write, every sentence you think, every scene you bash your head against the desk over - everything you read over later and wonder what you were on at the time... It's Something. It's Practice. You're Learning.

Quantity. To improve, you must practice. And practice means volume.

Go. Write. Do something.

Reading Challenge Redux

Oh. Dear. One hundred and fifty-seven. Count 'em. They're all in the sidebar. That's how many books I currently own that I haven't read yet. I think I'm in trouble...

And I haven't even gotten to my 'on loan' shelf yet...

Now, before you fall off your chair (as I did when I counted them), some of these I have started to read and stopped for various reasons. Many of these are non-fiction. Quite a few are recent acquisitions (by which I mean 'some time this year, because I have had no time to read this year'). And a few I am well aware of the storyline, but haven't actually read (such as Peter Pan, Treasure Island, etc).

I refuse to include textbooks, and as I start some of the non-fic I may delete it off the list if it turns out to be textbooky. But as it stands, I have 157 books to read by the end of next year. Unless my uni load is much lighter next year, I don't see me doing it - but at least now I have a list, and accountability, and shall do something about reducing the list at the very least.

Those of you who are also doing the challenge, good luck! :)

Updatory Things: Changes of Direction

Two direction changes today. Firstly, I seem unable to resist the urge to give weekly updates, so my 'regularly scheduled' blogging will be thrice weekly: One serial piece, one Blog-Of-The-Week, and one update.

Two-thly. The Change of Direction. *sigh* Logan.

*shakes head and determines to cease being cryptic*

Logan. For those of you that have either been reading this blog for a while, or have access to my wips (critique circle...), you'll have heard of one of my wips, Logan. Logan is a prequel-by-several-hundred-years to the story variously termed (at different points in its life) Athara's Search, Search, Messiah, and The Black Gates.

And I've just realised: it's all wrong.

For quite some time now I've been having trouble getting enthused about it; in fact, pretty much since I read Lisa Shearin's Magic Lost, Trouble Found. MLTF is such a great, pacy book (more on that in this week's serial post) that I found myself thinking - boy, my stories are so boring. They drag. Nothing exciting actually happens.

A few days after this, I found myself writing The Project, an incredibly fun little potboiler that I decided to write as a potboiler as an exercise in Making Things Happen. So far the feedback has been extremely positive, so it seems to be working.

And I got thinking about Logan. The MC, oddly enough called Logan, bores me. The chapters bore me. And I developed this sneaking suspicion that the nine chapters I've written, which equate to nearly fourteen thousand words, were all backstory. The story doesn't actually start until chapter ten, when Logan... er, is dragged off to school. (See, no spoilers O:)).

And besides that - did I mention this? - Logan as a character bores me.

So, after some thought and discussion with a critting partner, I have come to a conclusion. Bran, Logan's 'villainous' elder brother is far more intriguing. This means I ought to write the story from his point of view.

I'm yet to get my head around how the story will start from Bran's POV, but I can already feel the tingly excitement at the prospect of getting inside Bran's head. It's one dark, twisty place to be, but at least it's interesting.

And so my change in direction. Let us hope it's for the better. %-)

Things You Wish You Knew Before Being Infected With the Writing Bug

1) It's addictive.

2) Writers blues can hit you daily.

3) Said blues make you want to stop writing.

4) The blues never disappear

5) The blues can be beaten back with positive comments. And chocolate. And donuts. And icecream. And....[insert food item]

6) If you actually critted your own work, you'd never write again.

7) Two real voices will appear in your head. The first voice always says 'Stop writing! You CAN'T write. You POV hop, You don't write actively. You can't spell. You info dump. You [insert writing weakness here].
The second voice, sometimes drowns out the first. It may not be often, but its message is strong enough to keep you through the times when the first voice says you're useless. 'WRITEWRITEWRITEWRITE. You CAN write better than some of the trash out there. So WRITE!'

8) Once you put up something on CC, you'll want to tear it off the queue, delete it, and chuck the idea out of your head. Unfortuantely, the idea, like the second voice (known as the writing muse), never goes away. It won't until you write it down, revise it, review it, revise it again, and keep revising until you are semi-happy with it.

9) *deleted for the benefit of the Evil Author Code, which states that we should never let our fellow members' egos grow too large*

10) However much you moan, groan and feel like a failure, you keep writing. Because you can't stop.

~written by Yunaleska of Critique Circle

Another Breakthrough

A long time ago, way back in highschool, I began a story. It was archaic and stilted - and had a horrible title - but I knew that somewhere, somewhere, there was something worth working on in it.

It was the first piece I ever submitted to Critique Circle; I chose it because I had no emotional attachment to it and so thought I wouldn't mind people telling me how horrible it was.

To my surprise, they didn't. My suspicions that there was something worthwhile in there was confirmed. So I worked on it.

The character that was supposed to be the villain became sympathetic, and eventually developed into a main character with his own story. I tried to weave his story in with the original main character in a story I temporarily titled Search... But it just didn't work.

And so, for months, I stalled. I couldn't figure out where to go with her story, and his story needed so much more worldbuilding to make it plausible.

But today...

Today I had a breakthrough. At work, scribbling away while I scanned, writing down my goals for the coming year, I began to think about this story, and what needed to happen.

And now I have at least two thirds of a semi-decent outline.

And I made an important discovery - once again, it was the muse balking that was holding me back. But this time the muse was balking for a good reason: the beginning was wrong.

All it took was a change from a slow, drawn-out and expected death to a quick accident, and voila! Beginning problem solved.

Now I can't wait to keep working on it :)

If only I could finish Evil Overlord first...

Brainwave

I have been puttering around, making virtually no headway on To Be An Evil Overlord... for nearly six weeks now. In that time, I've written less than 10,000 words. In fact, I've done only just over eight thousand.

That is pathetic.

I mean, I wrote over fifty thousand in November. How can I not write the five or so more that I need to finish the damn book? Seriously, what is wrong with me?

Thusly have I been beating my self over the non-literal head for the past few weeks. To no avail. Do I have a finished manuscript? No.

But tonight, I had a brainwave. I was sitting there, reading Lazette Gifford's Two Year Novel, and all of a sudden something I'd read in Holly Lisle's Create-a-Plot Clinic combined with what I was reading and hit me full force.

See, the muse is a tricky little beast. It doesn't like work, or discipline, or any other of those little nasties that the conscious brain imposes upon it.

And I realised: I can't finish the book because my subconscious - that pesky muse - is afraid of how much work it's going to be to rewrite it. It knows that once I've finished the next thing is rewrites, and that scares it.



"...Rewrites? You've got to be kidding. To rewrite this story you're going to need to add in SO much stuff. You need to weave all those things that happened in the middle into the beginning. You need to solidify the characterisation and make sure it's there from the beginning. You need to iron out the sub plots and make them logical and coherent. You drastically need to time-check the whole thing, and you need to deal with the horrendous amount of POV characters you have. And what the heck happened to the ferret? Seriously? Sounds like a heck of a lot of work to me. Rewrites? Uh uh. Not me. Not today. No thanks.

So, you see, it's probably better if you don't finish. If you don't finish, you can just think about all the stuff you'll need to do, but not actually have to do it. You can say - yes I know the book's not perfect, it's only a first draft - and it will all be okay. I mean, I'm not trying to sabotage you here or anything. You know you can finish it. It's a measly six scenes, right? And you did nearly thirty during nano. So it's not like you're doing it coz you can't.

Besides, you're bored with it anyway, remember? Why don't you try working on these cool stories... They're so much more fun. The plotting is fun, remember? And you love the writing..."



At this point I nearly choke, recalling how many times during nano I hated the fact that I wanted to be a writer, and hated the fact that I had to sit down to write. Muses. Yerk.

Perhaps now I've established the problem, I can devise a solution. I'll let you know how I go with that...