Just Write Already

In music we admire musicians who practice ten or more hours a day. Painters and other forms of art are the same. Only in writing does the myth of not practicing to get better come roaring in. We teach new writers to slow down, to not work to get better, to spend fewer and fewer hours at writing, to not practice, and then wonder why so many writers don’t make it to a professional level. ~ Dean Wesley Smith

You know, that’s a really, really good point. I mean, everyone knows on some sort of instinctive level that you have to practice something to get good at it, but I know that I for one get majorly sucked into the 'perfect pot' trap.

I really need to learn to let go of that and just applying the BIC method – i.e., Butt In Chair. Sit, write, and quit worrying over the quality of the derned stuff. Research and logic are both quite clear that the more you do something, the better you’ll get. Abstractivising, as I am so fond of doing, will only get you so far; I want more than 'grandiose theories and pile of dead clay'.

So excuse me – I’m off to write :)

[Addendum: After writing this, I did in fact go off to write, and wrote nearly 1200 words of a new short in about 40 minutes. SQUEE.)

Habitually, Really

Can I just whinge for a moment about how hard it is to get back into a habit? I can? Oh. Great. Thanks. O:)

There’s this piece of folk wisdom I remember learning sometime in highschool about habits. It takes three months to make one, and only three days to break one, so the wisdom goes. Personally, I don’t know about that. Sometimes it only takes a day or two to break a habit – and some habits take far longer than three months to form.

Eating, for example. The diet I have to be on right now is complex and extremely limited, but can be broken down essentially to two things: 1) no added sugar in any form and nothing with more than about 10% natural sugars, and 2) no moulds of any kind, which includes fungi like mushrooms, ‘safe’ moulds found on cheeses and bruised fruit, anything brewed/fermented like vinegar or soy products, and anything with yeast. Like I said; pretty limiting.

I can’t really remember what I expected when I first started on it, how long I thought it might take until I got used to it, but now, six months in, I can tell you it still isn’t a habit. My first instinct is still to reach for the chocolate-coated sultanas on the bench leftover from Christmas for a snack, or to ponder a quick sandwich for lunch. I can feed myself now without stressing too much about what to eat, but it’s certainly not a habit.

Checking my email? That’s a habit. My first instinct when I switch on the computer is to open firefox and click on my gmail shortcut. Literally. I have to stop and think about it if I want to do something else. (Email addict? Me? Never...)

So, after not really writing for several months now, how do I go about getting back in the habit? I used to have a process that told my brain it was time to write, a way or a place I’d sit in, things I’d have open on the computer, a mindset. All of that is gone, faded into distant memory with disuse. And when I sit at the computer, I’m more likely to spend an hour or so thinking, “I should write”, than actually writing anything. (Besides, there are EMAILS to read! O:))

I googled ‘characteristics of a habit’, wondering if anything would useful would appear to solve my problem for me (which is either terribly lazy, or terribly postmodern – or perhaps both) and the only article that wasn’t about smoking or chemicals was this one. It suggests that there are three characteristics of a habit: 1) You feel weird not doing it. 2) It’s second nature. 3) Other people notice you doing it.

Well, 1) I already feel weird for not writing, and 2) I doubt I can magically make it second nature without just doing it already. Not much help there. But 3) might have something: other people notice.

Okay, so I’m not necessarily going to hang a big sign over my head to say “I’m writing!!1!!”, but what if I approach it the other way? What if I enlist someone to watch for me writing, so they can tell me when they notice I’m not doing it?

Really, all I’m talking about it accountability. Once upon a time, I used livejournal for that. And since finding one person committed enough to bug me every single day about whether I’ve written or not is a bit of an ask for that person, maybe the blog’s the way to do it.

So I’m going to revive the livejournal again. Feel free to cheer me on or just laugh at my pathetic attempts (either works), and if you’d like to join me in reforming a habit – or even just forming a new one – let us all know in the comments here, or you can comment along with me every day on the livejournal blog :)

Any other handy tips for forming habits?

Intelligent People

You know, for a bunch of relatively intelligent people, we writers have to learn the same lessons over and over and over again a lot of times.

Or maybe that's just me.

Remember, those of you that were with me then, last September when I decided to take the pressure off myself and just write what I wanted when I wanted? And how that had an unexpected upturn in productivity?

Remember this year, my lamentations over how many months I've had 'terrible' word counts? Five months under my self-imposed 10k goal, one of which is the worst on record since July '07, only three months after I started keeping records. Yeah, I've been feeling pretty down on myself at time.

BUT!

Don't you love it when there's a but? I do :o)

BUT. I realised something yesterday, in preparing for Nano: my pre-Nano word count was only a hair shy of 120k for the year. That means if I make nano, I'll be at 170k. That's my second best year in the four I've kept records for!

Second best!

!

So, you know, when intelligent people say you should really slow down, take your time, and enjoy writing - they actually know what they're talking about. One day, I'll remember that.

Where Do I Begin?

As a totally unrelated prenote (oh look, can I call this a prologue?!), the Twitterous Ones among you will hopefully have already spotted my gleeful squeeing about the fact that I finally have the blog looking how I want it to. The non-Twitterous Ones among you, click through now and check it out!

>SEGUE<

Today, I'm revisiting an old question of mine, because I found it saved in my drafts and it relates conveniently to Monday's post on what you need before you write. For a long time, I found beginning stories really, really hard. Where did I start? At the beginning, obviously, but where was the beginning?

After all, as my MC in Santuary, Edge, says, "I'm not sure where any story begins. Mum always says stories begin with "Once upon a time," or "In the beginning" - but that only works for written-down stories. In real life there's no one standing behind your shoulder waiting to whisper the magic words that let you know that something Big is about to happen."

In writing, as in life. No one is there to tell you where to begin your story, and technically, all stories began with the beginning of the world, because if the world hadn't begun, our MC's parents wouldn't have existed and if they hadn't existed and done x, y and z, our MC wouldn't have existed, and if our MC hadn't done x, y and z they'd have ended up as a butterfly flapping their wings over Brazil.

Incidently, life is a perfect example of a chaos system in action. In order to be classed as a chaos system, you need three things: 1) sensitivity to initial conditions (a tiny change in the beginning of things drastically affects the outcome); 2) topographic mixing (that is, your red and your white are actually allowed to mix together to form pink, they're not just stuck statically at either end of your paint tray); and 3) variable density, which is essentially, for the non-scientific among us, the same as 2).

/digression.

Life has a sensitivity to intial conditions, so fundamentally, everything about your character's life is important to your story.

Only it's not, because otherwise books would be a million pages long and really, really boring.

So. Back to where we started: Where do you start?

(Ha, did you like that?)

First of all, all stories have what's called an 'inciting incident' - that thing that happens that the main character absolutely can't ignore, that pushes them into action, that says now, now stand up and do something because either way, your life will never be the same again.

So that's kind of a good place to start your story. But what if you don't know what it is yet? Won't know until you write it? Where do you start then?

Well, where do you start? I've no idea. But this is where I start: with one simple question. And it isn't 'Where do I start?' o.0 Smart-alec. :P It's this, directed at my main character:

What are you doing, right now?

And then I close my eyes, and I listen for as long as it takes for my character to answer. And so far, so far, they haven't led me too badly astray.

Has anyone else tried this as a method of beginning? Does anyone have another tried-and-true method of starting stories? Or does everyone except me find this really, really easy, and just sits down and writes? :P :D

Before You Write

As many ways to write as there are people who write - I'm sure you've heard that before. Which is why, everywhere you turn for advice, you find conflicting information about the writing process. When you're starting out as a beginner, these contradictions can be overwhelming.

I'm the kind of person who likes to be well informed, so when I decided that I was serious about this whole writing thing, I read. Like, a lot. Like, a-lot-a-lot. I devoured entire websites of information, archives of blogs, shelves at the library - if there was information on how to be a writer, I read it.

Only, in the end, none of it really helped me begin, you know? Because your writing process is as unique as your thought processes. Sure, people can give you tips and tricks to try (Holly Lisle's Create-a-Plot Clinic was invaluable for that for me), but in the end, only you know what you need to have straight before you write.

I'm working on my fifth novel now, and - though you'd think I'd have figured it out before - it's hit me what it is that I need to have in place before I write. What is it, I hear you ask? Because yes, my ears are good like that, and I can hear you ask questions you didn't even know you were asking, bwa ha ha! >:)

Anyway, what I've discovered I need is a character arc. Plot-schmot, structure-schmucture, scenes-schmenes. What I need to know is where my character is going. Ideally, characters change throughout a novel, right? Well, that's what I need to know. What's the big change my character goes through? What do they learn - about life, or themselves, or whatever?

Because something else I've figured out. You know how people talk about writing books for particular people, or to explore a particular situation, or to Say Something, or whatever else? Yeah. Well, the other thing I've figured out it this: I tell my stories for my characters. I see who they are at the beginning of the story, and I want to show them how they can become the better people I know they can be.

Weird, I know. It's like, Hey everyone! I write about things that never happened and never could because I want to let the voices in my head know they can be Good People Too!

But hey. I never claimed to be sane ;)

How about you guys? What's the one thing you need to have in place before writing? And do you tell your stories for a particular reason, or just because it's fun and you can? :D

Where's Your Focus?

After writing that post about finding my focus on Wednesday, I was poking around through my saved drafts and saw the title of this post. I dragged it out, and decided I should post it today and pretend it was all a part of the Great Plan, talking about focus twice in a row.

*ahem* Yes. I planned it. Hear me? You never heard me admit otherwise, m'kay? Good.

When I first reread Marked (previously Hunter Hunted) after writing it back in January, I realised something. This is what I said in my notes to myself for this post:

"I realised I don't want to write it [Marked] for the cool religion, 'cause I don't know anything about that. I want to write it for the character's journey. Likewise, what interests me with Jesscapades is not the tech and spyness, but the mystery of the glasses".

I stalled out writing Marked for a while, and I worked myself into impossible, implausible holes in Jesscapades. Why? Because I wasn't writing the story I thought I was writing.

With Marked, I thought I was writing a story about a cool tiger religion, where humans are sacred and violence against them is forbidden. With Jess, I thought I was writing a cool spy/assassin story with lots of tech and gadgets.

I was wrong, on both counts.

Marked is a story about a young tiger's battle with his religion; about someone learning to trust that they can't see all the eventual outcomes of their actions and that laws exist for a reason; and most of all, it's about someone realising that no one is ever to low to be loved, or too far gone to be redeemed. Even if you do happen to start a full-scale inter-species war. O:)

Jesscapades is a story about one girl's attempt to save her sister from herself; it's about learning that you have to let people make their own mistakes; it's about the mystery of magic and the workings of Fate.

Marked still has the cool tiger religion. Jess still has the gadgets. But neither of these is the driving force behind the story, and as I was writing I realised I didn't want it to be. It wasn't what I was interested in; it wasn't where my focus was. Both times, I stalled because I was trying to force the story to be what I thought it should be, not what I really and truly wanted it to be.

Knowing your focus before you writing - knowing why you want to write this story, what the point of it is for you - is just as important as figuring out what your focus is after you write, when you're editing.

I guess it's kind of like life, in a way: Is your focus what you think your life ought to be, what others think it ought to be, or is it what you want it to be, in your heart of hearts? Do you know what you want it to be? How do you know you've got there if you don't know where 'there' is?

And I guess that's like writing: How do you know what you think until you see what you say, after all? The joy, in the end, is in discovering.

Kill Them All And Start Again

...This, dear friends, is what I currently wish to do. I have less than three chapters to the end, and I've even written the final chapter. But I HATE THIS NOVEL!!

*throws a temper tantrum*

*breathes*

Ahem. So. Let us now proceed to do a calm and logical analysis of last week, aka the Week of Much Writing.

The Week of Much Writing. Ha. Yeah, well. It wasn't the Week of Much Writing so much as the Week of a Fairly-Decent-Amount of Writing. Since I posted on the 3rd, I've written 5,792 words on HNOT - which is actually not bad, but is also not as much as I intended. Like I said, I still have 2.5 chapters to go.

But seriously? Urgh. I have Teh Hatez big time. I'm sick of the MC being whiney and immature; I'm sick of the plot going in circles (which I think it isn't, actually; I've just stared at these chapters so many times they feel repetitive), and I'm sick of the whole thing. It's so tempting just to write:

And Bystar stole the Key and took it to Mercury, and Mercury ran to the Eye. She used her power to sense the Mystery Man and sic'ed Bystar on him. Deviran and Chiara tried to stop Mercury until they realised she was helping them. The Flare came, Mercury knocked herself out trying to channel it, but got the Mystery Man and destroyed the demons and saved the world. Yay.

And then cut to the final chapter, which I have actually written.

Please? Can I?

No?

The main problem here is that I loathe writing the climax of any story. There's so much pressure to Get It Right; it's supposed to be the culmination of everything that's gone before, and it's usually an Action Scene, which I'm terrible at. Actions Scenes always come out mechanical and forced the first million times I write them :P So, I vote we have novels with no climax. Who's with me?

*crickets chirp*

*sigh* Right. Back to the keyboard, then. Only I'm currently at the keyboard, so it's more like stay-at-the-keyboard-and-not-get-distracted. Or something like that.

2.5 chapters. It's not really that hard, is it?

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?

Sometimes, Writing Hurts

So. Tired. That’s pretty much the sum of my life, lately. This term has been an absolute shocker – but the good news is, term two is pretty much agreed to be the hardest term of the year, and it’s NEARLY OVER!

Despite all this, I have actually been managing to squeeze in some words here and there, and I’m on target to meet my usual minimum of 10k for the month.

HOWEVER.

The story, she hurts.

After writing Sanctuary and having it mostly come out so easy, I guess I’d naively assumed that that was how it was going to be from here on in: I’d sit down, ideas brimming, voice chattering, and just... write.

Yeah, no. For anyone out there who still harbours a shred of delusion that this gig is, you know, easy – give that up right now. Seriously. It’ll make things easier in the long run. Because writing is not easy, not by any stretch of the imagination.

But just because it’s difficult, doesn’t make it wrong. Sitting back and looking at what I have so far of the novel (just over 11k), it’s actually not that bad, for a first draft. There’s promise, and I know where I want to go with it, and I know that in a few chapters’ time things are going to get really, really shiny.

You know how sometimes you’re writing along, beating the words out of your brain, only to realise as you put them on the page that you’re actually – le gasp – bored? Usually, it’s a pretty good indication that you’re writing a boring scene; if you’re bored, your reader probably will be too. But not always. I’m pretty well convinced that the scenes I’m writing right now are necessary – and I’ve gotten some good feedback on the first half of what I’ve written. It’s not terrible, there’s mystery and Things At Stake – it’s just not the bit I want to be writing right now.

Which, when I thought on it, reminded me: stories like to be written differently. For me, anyway. They all have their own personalities, and Borderlands has always been a story that fought lineality. And yet, I’ve been trying to write it in order, trying to navigate a complicated timeline and convoluted structure without really knowing what I have first.

So. Back to – well, not the drawing board, but to a different approach. Which means I have to release the need to send my progress to my alpha reader, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I guess.

On that note, off to write :)

Tools: How Different Stories Want To Be Written

Have you ever noticed that different stories seem to have different personalities? Not just in terms of subject matter or tone, because obviously that will differ depending on what you're writing about. I mean, rather, the different demands that stories will make of you as you're writing them - the different ways they come out, and the different ways they demand to be written.

Both of my successful NaNo novels so far have required being written in yWriter, a nifty little program that allows you to sort the story via scenes and chapters, and in which you can drag things around and reorder them with great ease.

The Hunter Hunted required a scene-by-scene outline that I typed into Excel, and used as a guide as I wrote the whole story out in Word.

Sanctuary refused any efforts to outline and insisted on being written one-and-a-half spaced in calibri font.

Jesscapades didn't care so much about the font, but needed a full, colour-coded outline in Excel, which was then copied into Word and each scene summary slowly replaced by the actual scene.

Different stories, different personalities, different requirements. Funny how that works.

One of my older stories, which has three plotlines, is insisting that I write the shorter of the plotlines (~20k) out in full first, and then insert it into the appropriate places as I write the rest. Currently, I'm thinking of beginning over on HNOT, and writing out all the scenes from one character's POV first, and then all the scenes from another POV, and so on, and then splicing them all together.

Why is this, do you think? Why do stories take on such a personality as we're writing them?

I think part of it for me is that my 'muse' gets bored easily - and writing every book the same way equates, for her, to boring. So we mix it up, and get different results from different processes - and now I'm really curious to know if other writers write like this, and also if this will continue. Will different stories always want to be written differently, or will I one (elusive) day discover the magic process that just Works for me, and that's how Novels Will Be Written?

You can probably tell I suspect the former ;)

But tell me - am I normal? Do you all write like this too? And what's been your most demanding novel, requiring that you write it in the most complicated way (like upside down hanging from a tree, for example)? I have one story that I can only seem to work on during thunderstorms!

I know. I'm crazy. The least you can do is reassure me that you are too ;) :D

Slow Down

I was originally going to title this post 'A New Cure For Writers' Block'. But really, it's not a new cure, for either the world in general, or myself. You've heard me talk about it before; the cure is simple: listen to your characters.

But it occurs to me that the principle involved has so many more applications, and can be summed up in just one word: listen.

Most of us are not so crash hot at the concept of listening. The fact that it's a primary skill taught in relationship seminars speaks to this point. Sure, we hear other people talking, and we can repeat back a rough idea of what they've said, and we can even respond appropriately, but how often do we actually listen?

Listening is hard. It requires focussing completely on the speaker, clearing your mind of everything but what they're trying to convey. No wandering off onto tangents of your own, no pondering what you're going to say next as soon as they finish speaking; just listening.

One of the primary reasons we're so bad at listening is the kind of world we live in, where minute-long soundbites are six times too long and an article nearing a thousand words is more like an essay. We're used to doing ten things at once - we call it 'multi-tasking', and we're proud of it.

As I type, I'm also half-watching The Flintstones on tv, I'm chatting to my baby sister via gtalk, I'm discussing puppy care with my husband, looking up a timetable on the school intranet, and uploading photos to my webalbums. I also have my email inbox open, a short story I'm editing, the spreadsheet that reminds me I need to weigh the puppies, and a host of writing related articles to read. Oh yeah, and Twitter.

Is it any wonder, then, that we struggle to really listen?

I mean, seriously. I'm a writer. I know I need to listen to my characters. I know my characters should have personalities that are well-rounded and unique and individual, and that motivate all of their actions. I know this. I know that this requires listening to them, letting them be.

So why am I so bad at doing it? Why, every time I butt my head against another wall in my story, does it take me forever to remember to stop, breathe, relax, listen?

I think there's a clue in what I said about the kind of society we live in. Our lives are so fast paced, we're conditioned to believe that everything can happen at the click of a button or the speed of thought. I sit down to write, and I expect that the words will be there, waiting for me - and if they're not, I get restless, dissatisfied, think I'm doing something wrong.

I procrastinate, because I know it will take me fifteen minutes or so of concentrating on writing for things to start flowing each day, and fifteen minutes seems like a Really Long Time.

But here's the thing: Creativity takes time.

It takes time for ideas to filter through our mind, for connections to be made, ideas to be formed. It takes time for these things to consolidate, to shape themselves into more than ephemerality, to live.

It takes time.

So I need to remember to give it time. I need to slow down. In the scheme of things, fifteen minutes isn't that long; and it's certainly less time than the hours I can fritter away through procrastination otherwise.

Turning off the distractions doesn't help; if I'm not committed to sitting down and pushing through those fifteen minutes, I'll find other things to keep me occupied - dishes, dinner, tidying, puppies...

As writers, it's so tempting to look around and see how much progress other writers are making, and to let that get us down. I need to work faster, I need to work harder......

Well, maybe. But that's only going to happen if first, I slow down.

How To Revise Your Novel 1

Quick note: Puppy-induced sleep deprivation and the whole new fulltime work thing are eating my brain cells. Possibly, they're also eating other cells too. I may fall apart at the seams any day now and start spilling internal organs everywhere. That would be exciting, and nearly as messy as the puppies will soon be. Bwa.

Yes, I has pointz here - for the next little while, posting on Inkfever will be Monday-Friday. Who likes Wednesdays, anyway? Ha.

On to the post...


Woo hoo!! Can you hear the screams of joy from there? Wherefore, you ask, scream I so? (oops, been watching too much Pride and Prejudice O:))

Because finally, FINALLY, I have finished lesson 3 of the How To Revise Your Novel course! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!

So, in honour of such a momentous occasion (it's only taken a month to do the relatively SHORT lesson), I'd bestow upon you all the great gift of a review O:) :D Don't you feel so privileged?

Lesson One: In which we discover our novel.

This lesson was pretty easy for me. It's something I tend to do with editing anyway, so it felt 'right'. The idea here is to discover three things: One, what you wanted when you started writing the novel, two what you got, and three what you want it to become.

One: Go back to the moment when you first started writing the novel and recall what it was that made you want to write it. Why this story? Why this way? What were you aiming for?

Two: Read through novel. Weep copious tears at how epically it fails to match number one. Use the shiny worksheets provided in the course and carefully examine what went wrong in several categories, such as story, character, worldbuilding, etc. Also keep track of bits you really, really love.

Three: Ponder upon all of this and try to imagine what you want the book to feel like when it's finished. Create a goal. Know what your intent is with your editing - otherwise you're guilty of Editing Without Intent >:)

This lesson was great because it gave me a feel for how much was really wrong with my story, and by using the worksheets I was able to identify that a few things that felt like lots of little problems were in actual fact just one big problem! :D

Lesson Two: In which we consider the nature of promises.

Every writer in existence really needs to have read this lesson. Holly talks about the promises that we make when we write a novel, some of which are universal to all novels (such as 'I will have something interesting to say' and 'I will not waste your time'), some of which we intend (the details we use to foreshadow, etc), and some of which we make without even realising it (eg, the details that we get a little too carried away with for no reason other than that they were pretty).

And even better, Holly talks about how to identify these promises. How can you tell when you've promised something? How can you tell when you've promised too much? Or too little?

When we write, there's an implicit promise that everything we include will be significant in some way. If there's a loaded gun in chapter one, it'll be fired (see Chekov). If the character introduces themself as having a particular issue, that issue will be addressed (if not resolved). And so forth. Promises are the foundation of story, the essence of your relationship with the reader, and they matter.

This lesson is all about identifying what you've promised, and whether you've followed up on that or not. I have a couple of random characters who are just that - random asides. They're not actually contributing to the story in any meaningful way - and I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking at promises.

Lesson Three: In which we examine the scenes.

Ironically this is the lesson that took me over a month to complete, and yet it is way, WAAAAAAY shorter than the other two. You've heard me talk before about The Sentence, that neat and tidy little way of encapsulating your scene and/or story and making sure it has all the necessary elements.

In this lesson, we go through our story scene by scene and create a Sentence for it. I tell you what, I thought I understood The Sentence before - but boy was I wrong!! Nothing, NOTHING, that I have encountered breaks down a scene so easily, in such a raw way, stripping away everything else and letting you scene it for what it really is - broken or whole.

Even if I do no further lessons from the course at all, this lesson ALONE will be worth the $188 I'm shelling out for the course.

It's a slog in a way that the other lessons aren't, because it really stretches your brain. You're forced to consider and reconsider, and figure out exactly WHAT it is that's making your scene work - or fail.

Two things I will take away from this that will help me forever in approaching The Sentence: One, the conflict is the natural result of the interaction between the protag and the antag. It's the meat of the scene. The twist, however, is the thing that matters. It's the change that makes this scene worthwhile, it's what gives the whole thing a point - and often, it comes at the end of the scene.

In Conclusion

So, that's it for now. I wish I was further along in the course than I am, but at present I'm struggling to even find time to write, let alone work through this course as well. But as I said, even if right now, today, this minute, you told me I couldn't have access to any more of the lessons, I'd still be happy. My story is going to be so much improved I get squiggly with glee just thinking about it.

Question for you guys: What's the biggest editing lightbulb moment YOU have ever had? The single thing that sort of went 'click' and helped you figure out how to deal with the process of editing?

Also, are any of you taking the course? What do you think so far?

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.

:)

Applying Hot Iron: Recalcitrant Characters

So, those of you who follow me on twitter will know that for the last week or so, I've been working pretty hard on Sanctuary. I got nearly 5k yesterday, huzzah!! But really, I don't feel like this is a really major achievement, because it's been easy. The MC, Edge (real name Emma), is a chatterbox. She wants to stop and talk about everything, everyone. She's guaranteed to always have a comment or an aside, and her voice just flows, because she Doesn't. Stop. Talking.

This is a good thing. Really, it is. It's just frustrating that I won't have much writing time in the next week due to family weddings and a new job! :D But on the other hand, it gives me confidence that I can drop the story for a week and come back to it without missing a beat - Edge will still be there, ready to chatter away the instant I put fingers to keyboard.

In complete contrast, let me introduce you to Deviran. He's a co-MC of my Magic Eyes Universe books, the sensible and silent to Mercury's loud and silly. I adore Deviran. He's gorgeous, he's smart, he's sensible, dependable, reliable... And silent. Oh. So. Silent.

Okay, I can deal with having a character who's the strong silent type. I can deal with having a character who doesn't have much to say. I can...

*implodes*

See, what's really frustrating about Dev is that he's not only the silent type in-story, he's also silent out of story. Which makes it near impossible to find out anything about him. I love him, I adore him - but who the heck is he??

So. Today, let's look at some techniques you can use on recalcitrant characters - and if you have any others, leave them in the comments. Trust me, I need all the ammunition I can get.

1) Interviews. These work best for chatty characters, but a few well-leveraged questions can often open up the silent characters too. If you're really having trouble, consider asking a friend to play the role of interviewer while you respond in-character. That way, you won't be able to anticipate the answer because you won't know the question.

2) Role Playing. For your character, that is. Tear them out of their own story/universe, and make them uncomfortable. Throw them to the sharks, have them fight a tiger, expose them to any nasties your other worlds might be harbouring. Anything and everything - throw them at your character, and watch and see how they respond. Liana Brooks calls this one the Reaction Chamber.

3) Kill them. Again, and again, and again. As creatively and painfully as you can, on paper for the world - and your character - to see. Have a competition with a friend to see how many deaths it takes before the character is willing to crack and give you information.

4) Find the Detail. Often, there is one particular detail about a character that triggers off a whole ranges of questions and answers, like a chain reaction. It's just a matter of finding the right detail. Go through everything you know about your character, piece by piece, and threaten you character with either the destruction of this detail, or the reversal of it. Threaten to make the guy a girl, the mother a teen - or in my case, threaten to give the only guy in the entire Academy without a familiar a new one. o.O

5) Ask Someone Else. Like everything in life, it really is possible to get too close to the situation. Sometimes it's hard to see the character for the characteristics - or vice versa. Ask a friend (preferably a writer, or at least someone like an actor who is used to the business of characterisation) to read over what you've got written down with your character (including any or all of the above suggestions) and tell you what they think of your character. You might be surprised at how clear the character is to someone who isn't you.

With Deviran, 4 and 5 were most successful. I found out a whole bunch about his past and now all of a sudden who he is in the present makes sense.

Have you ever used any of these tactics with success? What other suggestions do you have for dealing with recalcitrant characters?

Christmas Repost: Left and Right, Editor and Muse

Reposted from May 19 2009. Updated to include video.

A little while ago a trend went through the writing blogosphere (as trends tend to do) for posts about one’s ‘Muse’. Belatedly, because what I taught in my creative writing class yesterday reminded me of it, I’m going to chip in with my own two cents ;)

There’s long been a theory that the two halves of your brain have different functions: generally, the right brain is typified as being the centre of creative impulse, of emotions and intuition and irrationality. The left, as the opposite, gets the job of being rational, logical, precise, mathematical, and has the ability to recognise patterns and so forth.

These days, the accuracy of this theory is beginning to be questioned as we learn more and more about neuroplasticity (the idea that your brain is ‘plastic’, or malleable, in terms of function: there’s no one-to-one relationship between area and function, because your brain can learn to perform any given function using any given part of the brain, if it needs to), but there’s still this basic concept ‘out there’ that people tend to be either right or left brain dominant, just like they tend to be left or right handed.

You’d expect, I suppose, writers to be predominantly right-brained: creative, intuitive, etc.
But here’s the thing: I firmly believe that you can’t be a really good writer without being in touch with both sides of your brain.

If you think about it, what I’m saying isn’t all that out-there. We discuss this concept as writers all the time – just in different terms.

For example, hands up who’s heard the term ‘muse’? Don’t you think the concept of the ‘muse’ – the creative impulse, who functions by instinct and spontaneity, who struggles with logic sometimes and is intensely intuitive – meshes nicely with ‘right brain’?

And what about the left brain? Well, who’s heard the term ‘inner editor’, or some such? People are pretty fond of personification, it seems; we even personify the different parts of our brain :D ;)

So we have a ‘muse’ and an ‘inner editor’, or a left and right brain for the more prosaic amongst us. Both of these ‘creatures’ can be right pains in the backside – the muse stubbornly refusing to reveal more of an idea, and the inner editor constantly criticising the ideas that we do get, both at their extremes resulting in writing paralysis – but both are intensely necessary to the writing process.

You can’t write both drafting and editing, and you can’t draft without imagination, nor edit without logic and an eye for detail.

Two halves: one whole.

Both may seem painful at times – but as writers it’s in our best interests to learn to work with them both – and most importantly, to learn how to switch between one and the other.

If you're interested, I highly recommend the following video, hosted by Alan Alda, which clearly demonstrates just how awesome the two sides of the brain are.



If the embedded video isn't working, try this link.

So – how about you? Do you personify your brain, or not?

Why, Hello, Internet!

Oh, so this is what you look like! I'd quite forgotten.

World, let me introduce you to the wonderfulness that is Australian internet: we have Limits. As in, download limits. Monthly download limits. And, because most of you live in places that are lucky enough not to have to deal with limits, let me elaborate: every time you visit a web page, you're downloading things into the temporary memory of your computer so that the page (text, graphics) can be displayed. The more you browse, the more internet you use.

This month, we ran out. Oops. When we run out, our speed switches back to dial up, which those of us who used the net when it first existed will remember is rrrrreeeeeaaaaalllllllllyyyyy sssssllllllooooooowwwwwwwwww........ So, I could download things (and thus view webpages), but it wouldn't let me upload things (eg twitter, blog). Blah. Silly thing.

ANYway. I'm back now :) And in the spirit of December and all things reflective and goalish, I'm doing a Merc and changing my December goals O:)

I wanted to squee about this on Monday, but, for obvious reasons, couldn't:

I finished The Hunter Hunted!!!!!!!

Yay!!! HH, as it's more commonly known, is also known as 'the tiger one', or 'the tiger novelette'. You can read the blurb for it here. Much happy fun :) I finished on Monday at just over 21,000 words, and I've decided that it's a nice length to use for the revision course I'm currently taking - so that's what I'm doing.

Naturally, this will impact my original goal, which was to have HNOT finished by Christmas. Ha. Ha, ha-ha ha. So far this month I've written nearly 4k on it; I need another 25k-ish to finish. Ahem.

So, revised goals are thus:

* Finish at least the first three lessons of the revision course using HH (the first one is way long).
* Aim for total wordcount for the month of 20k (am at 10k presently).
* Of that, at least 6k on HNOT, to bring it up to 60k, which will leave ~20k to be finished in January :)

Sound like a plan? I think so. I hope so. The Muse is curled up in her little white bed, snoring her head off at the moment. And my characters have all decided that it's holidays for them, too; they're hanging out at the boat house drinking grape by-products and hanging christmas wreaths, and generally being totally slack bums.

What amuses me is that half of them think it's a northern hemisphere christmas, complete with snow and grey weather, and the other half are determined to have a good old Australian beach christmas. Consequently, the landscape keeps flickering back and forth like a really bad old film o.O Characters. They're bizarre.

Anyone else having to rethink their December plans due to Life/Busyness/Christmas/The End of The World(TM)?

No Post Today...

No post today, but this is amusing: Slush Reading, Seuss Style.

And this is very, very interesting - and a pretty good analogy of how I write ;)

Also, don't forget to enter Friday's Contest! It's not difficult - just create a sentence using mostly words from my recent wordle, and post it in the comments for your chance to win! :)

And if you're in the mood for contests, Angela over at The Bookshelf Muse has a great one going to celebrate reaching 100,000 hits! :) Yay!

Oh, and I received a blog award :o) Thank you so much, Kristi, and I'm so sorry it took so long for me to acknowledge it!

I have several awards that are supposed to be down on the left sidebar, but blogger is persistently misbehaving. I'll get them up eventually o.O

Upping the Stakes

So, since I'm officially on holidays from uni now (and never have to go back! Did I mention that? Ha! No more uni! *bounce*), I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on my horrendously long To-Be-Read (TBR) pile. Sometime last year, Merc made a goal of reading 100 books in a year; I decided I couldn't do that many, and would just read all the books I owned but hadn't read.

Yeeeah. No.

Last count that was 200+ books. *blush*

ANYway. I'm reading. And recently, I read a really excellent fantasy trilogy - the Black Jewels tril by Anne Bishop (which, by the way, is definitely R 18+, and DO NOT READ if you're at all squeamish about sex/violence/abuse). These books are stunning, in every sense of the word, and they're one of a handful of series/books that will stick around in my memory for a Very Long Time, and shape not only how I write, but how I think.

Which brings me to today's topic: Upping the stakes.

I read book one of this trilogy, and it gripped me. Like, I spent all night dreaming about it, gripped me. And, being Curious Writer, of course, I wanted to know why. Sure, the plot was intense (esp book 1), the characters so real I wanted to murder some and adore forever others, and the worldbuilding so beautiful I want to steal it all right now and make it Mine.

But none of that is the reason; none of that explains why I balled my eyes out for the last two chapters of the first book, and the second last chapter of the last book, and why I dreamt about these books every night after I'd read them.

Why did these books have such an impact on me? Because everything mattered. Bishop created a character that is not only adored by nearly everyone she meets, but also by the reader. She's an amazing girl/woman, with a magnetic personality. And then Bishop slams her over the head with every kind of heartache and abuse possible.

And the other main characters have to save her.

It works because everything is at stake; the characters literally have everything to lose, everything to gain.

Now, I don't want to suggest that unless you go out and destroy all of your characters' lives and totally tread them into the ground, unless you plot involves the destruction of the entire known universe, then it's not going to be compelling.

That's not true. Books can be very compelling, even if all that will change at the end of the day is the main character's own life.

The point isn't the size of the change; it's the importance of the change. It's our job, as writers, to convince our readers that what we're writing about matters; that actions have consequences, that those consequences will suck for someone the reader cares about, and that they don't want that to happen.

I've been using this lately in my NaNo novel. The story started out a bit fluffy, really: girl graduates from Evil Overlord school, wants to take over her city of birth to get her parents' attention, ends up accidentally blowing things up which is both good and bad for lots of people. Sure, it's a lot of fun - but even fun isn't enough. It has to matter*.

* To the story, to the reader. Not necessarily in some big 'Oh my gosh this is life-changing!' way; more things matter to us than change our lives.

And so, I went on a little romp through my plot and looked for ways to up the stakes. Those of you following me on twitter might have heard some talk recently of the demons raining from the sky; that's just one way I've introduced a bigger threat for Mercury, my MC, to face, one more complication to her plans and motivation for her to act out the final climax of the book. Her actions now matter, because they affect more people than just herself and her small circle of acquaintances; her actions will impact lives, and she knows it.

I know this has been a somewhat rambly post, but the take home point is this: What you write about has to matter in order for it to resonate with readers. Big things matter - but so do little things. It's your job as a writer to convince your readers that what you're writing about is important, even if only for the context of the story.

If you're struggling, if it feels like your work is falling a little flat - try upping the stakes. Give your characters something to work for, and things that will not only get in their way but also shred them into little pieces (physically, emotionally, whatever - your choice :D) along the way.

Conflict. Conflict is the lifeblood of fiction. Conflict matters.


So, tell me: what's your favourite conflict you've ever inflicted on a character? Who's the character who has to fight for the highest stakes? And which character matters most to you? I'll answer in the comments after you do ;)

Trying Something New

So, long-time reader of this blog will know that for me, the first 7ish chapters of a novel usually fly past. It's when I hit chapter 8 that I hit trouble. (I can't find a post to back this up, but trust me: it's true. It's also the reason why I have so many first-seven-chapters of novels littering my harddrive o.0)

How Not To Take Over The World, the spoofy fantasy novel that I'm writing for NaNoWriMo, is running fit and true to form: the first 8 chapters flew past in a blur of giggles and glee... And then I hit chapter 9.

Slam. Right into that wall.

*pokes it*

So, what do I do when all the impetus that keeps my work going come screeching to a halt? When my plot starts getting Serious and I have to actually think about keeping the characters within the bounds of the story, when I have to start saying no to random fun tangents and basically my whole self-esteem as a writing drops through the floor - Can I do this? Can I really tie all this squee together into something coherent? How can I live up to the standard of the first few chapters, which are funny?

Usually, when I write a novel, I outline thusly: I start the novel with a reasonable idea of how it will end, and some inklings as to what the midpoint change will be. I write a chapter. I get ideas, and I write the next chapter. For the first 7-8, I'm usually outlining a chapter or two ahead as the current scenes spark ideas for new ones.

Then I hit the end of act one: The Wall. Ordinarily, it's about now that the plot starts coming together, I see how things are going to fit into the storyline, and I'll outline to about the middle of the novel. As I draw closer to the middle, I'll outline about that number of chapters again further on - so I'm always say ten chapters ahead with the outline.

When I hit the middle, or just past, I'll have an outline nearly to the end anyway, so I'll usually sit down and outline all the way to the end at this point.

Note that when I say outline, I mean the Line For Scene (L4S) method: just a single sentence describing the main conflict of the scene - although sometimes I'll throw in some dialogue too if it comes to me ;)

That's how I'd usually do it; and usually, I'd struggle through the middle with none of the delight that I had in the first chapters, plodding onward because that's what my outline tells me to do. I'd finish the book, but by then I'd be sick of it, because I knew everything that was going to happen and nothing surprised me. I didn't let anything surprise me.

Which is totally contradictory to everything I've learned and know about writing. We write to have fun, we write to discover, to be surprised and delighted - and by outlining as I do, for me, it kills the joy of the spontaneity that I find in the first handful of chapters. I say "for me", because some people do outline comprehensively, and it works for them. Good on them, I say :)

But this time, I'm going to try something different. It's NaNo, after all, and setting yourself free from your usual rules and boundaries is practically in the rules.

This time, I'm going to remember everything I learned in the Think Sideways course about creating surprises that surprise even me; about 'leaving toys on the floor' as I write for my subconscious to pick up later and turn into twists and turns.

I'm also going to remember everything I'd learned recently by experience about listening to my characters. When I get stuck, I'm going to resist the temptation to plot and outline my way through it by logic; people aren't always logical, after all. Instead, I'm going to sit back, visualise my character and where they are, and ask them what they're doing.

They'll show me; they already have.

And hopefully, this will allow me to hold onto that feeling of spontaneity and delight that's seen me through the first 8 chapters - though of course, I still worry that the story will suck :D hehe.

So, NaNo. I cracked 25k yesterday, and am pretty much on target to finish 50k comfortably in the month. Who else is doing it? How are you going? What have you learned so far? And no, you can't say nothing - because every time we write, we learn something, even if it's only to never, ever use second person omniscient tense while utilising a backwards timeframe again O:) :D

Why Continue To Write?

So, you may or may not have noticed, but I’m slowly developing a trend on this blog for posting meatier, philosophical, more abstract posts on a Monday, more concrete posts on writing on a Wednesday, and fun stuff on a Friday.

I’m going to consolidate this a bit, because the next few Mondays I want to talk about something that’s come out of one of my university classes: what it means to write, and why I write. I touched on this subject once a while ago, but I never managed to reach a reason that seemed to me to be very satisfying.

Equipped with the thinking coming out of my uni class, I think that I now am.

So, let us begin: probably attacking the whole thing backwards, I want to look today at why I continue to write.

It is a fundamental fact that no one story can ever tell all there is to tell about the events it purports to describe. There will always be other aspects, other points of view, different places to begin, different places to end. When we write, we make decisions: What shall we put in? What shall we leave out? What is significant to what we’re trying to say or show? How do we know?
How readers read our text is a direct result of our decisions: if we neglect to mention that the main character’s hair is brown, some people may imagine it as blonde, or red – or blue. But does this matter? If yes, then we should probably amend the text to include that fact that the MC’s hair is brown.

What we choose to put in is important.

Equally important is what we choose to leave out.

Too often when we write, we leave things out without really thinking about them. We write from a certain point of view because that is the one that occurs to us; we choose the view of the world that will be presented because it ‘feels’ right. We write the story because that’s how the story works, without stopping to consider what the long-lasting impacts in the story world might be; how other characters might feel about the story; whether what we’re saying really does justice to the issue at the heart of it, or whether we’re over-simplifying.

Issues are complex. Life is complex. And I love writing because it allows me to ponder this. Okay, so the hero won the day and evil is vanquished – but what Mr Evil Dude’s family? He had parents, somewhere, presumably. How do they feel about this so-called hero, who just murdered their only son?

Okay, so Mr X murdered a guy, which almost by definition makes him a Bad Person. But what if he hadn’t? What if the guy had lived? What if it would have made the world a worse place, would have turned it inside out and made it chaos?

This goes even for stories which purport to subvert genres norms: Okay, so you’re writing about the bad guys. Why? What are you leaving out on the hero’s side of things?

What ‘s left out matters as much as what’s left in.

So why do I continue to write? Because no one story can ever say it all.

Why do you continue to write?