Words About Writing

I want to write. I know the only thing is to write. Want to write? Do it! Just sit down and do it. Period. At my Writers' Group this morning, I got some good feedback on a section I read out loud. So I came home motivated to sit and work on that scene. But it's hot, and I'm uncomfortable, and it's distracting. No. That's an excuse. If I want to write, I need to just do it. If I really want to write, to have written, to be a Writer, then the temperature shouldn't matter. The fact that I'm out of coffee shouldn't matter. The work conference call coming up in 3 hours shouldn't matter.  I'm here, now. At my computer, ready to write. I need to write. Writer's Block does not exist. I will write, and I will write well.

This year I set myself a daily goal of 2,000 words. If I can do that, at least for a while, then I'll have a cushion when I get to the muddy middle and stall out. I hope I don't stall out. I love watching that graph of my word count on the Nanowrimo website.  It's going extremely well. In fact, today the words are flowing so well that I'm willing to skip all other activities for as long as it keeps up. I've already exceeded 2k words (it's noon), but I'm in the middle of a scene and anxious to see where it goes. I still have the problem of having nothing set up for the ending. I know the ending I want, so maybe I should take a day to focus on that. Write the ending, and that way there's a goal to shoot for when the words won't come. We shall see. Today I'm just celebrating this feeling of success!

I'm resetting my goals. Writing comes first. It's been very easy as an unpublished writer to set the writing aside, especially now that I have a business to take my time. But I think I need to ease back from that. Here's the thing. The business is good; it's supposed to solidify retirement, but it's not "my" thing. I supported it financially, and now have many things to do with it. I've been working very hard to do my part and show that I'm invested. I don't know that my efforts are as well-received as I thought. I know what I've been doing would be helpful in the long-run, so I won't totally stop, but ... I can slow down. My writing. That is my goal. That's for me. That could be my retirement plan. But I need to focus more on the day-to-day of it. The improvement of style. The writing. The editing. The querying. Get myself in place for my own future. Work for the business can fill in gaps in my day, if needed. Little side projects...

Slower than ever.  I am still working through the Nanowrimo editing series, but that new business venture is taking more of my time than I expected. So much for being a silent partner! Still. Forward progress is forward progress. I'll take what I can get. Bonus: I've joined a writing group! This is better than the last group I tried out. A short time of writing, then a lot of discussion, feedback, and editorial suggestions. To the point that I tried out some of the editorial suggestions this afternoon, in my WIP.  Very helpful.  I think my writing will only improve now that I have a group of conscientious fellow-writers to consult on methods.

It's no good.  This dead girl story is wrecking me. Until my other draft comes back from my reader I need to change my pace. I'm going to pick back up my "magnum opus" (as I call it).  This is the one that I worked on last winter. It's very big and needs a lot of work. Of course, I don't want to get too deeply into it, because I must edit the one from my reader as soon as it comes back. I'll open it, and maybe I'll start to work on the timeline and characters a little. I recall that while I was writing the story more characters were coming into play that did not get a character sheet. Doing it during a writing contest meant all my words went into the document, not the background information. One thing about this current challenge being time-driven: I've worked on the character sheets and been adding to them as things come up. It is actually helpful to have them right there when I want to decide who will do what in a scene! So it will probably help ...

Do any of my fellow readers get caught in the emotion of the story they are working on? I think that might be part of my problem with this one. It is SO dark, and I'm writing about heavy stuff that I kind of know nothing about, I think that it is sapping my energy. These last few days, I want nothing more than to sleep. I need to write 2 hours a day (average that, at least) but as soon as I'm vertical I just want to lie back down on the bed and read or play games on my phone. I have no energy. I think it's all going into this book that will never see the light of day.  I'm exhausted. But I'm writing. I finally asked my reader, and they admitted that they were only working on it "in spurts". So I pushed for a commitment to finish before the month is out. I need to get into that one. There's joy, and illumination, and friendships in that one. This current WIP is the loneliest thing I've written. Of course, I'm the creator, so I'm filling my t...

woof. 2 days into Camp Nanowrimo and ... It's actually going well. But not as I expected. I am working in the nightmare torture work I mentioned previously, and am diverted from pressuring my volunteer reader about the WIP they are reviewing for me. On day one, after writing, organizing, and filling in blanks about characters, I had what was either a startling revelation or a passing flicker of thought:  This might be better as a different genre altogether. It's not going to change my direction for now. I'm just passing time and keeping my creative juices going. Besides, this book will never see the light of day, so it's just for me. Still, later - today, in fact - it occurred to me that this novel could be my "play" novel. Play around with changing a book from one thing to another, just to see how well I can do that.  Maybe. Doubtful, because that seems like a lot of work for something no one will read, but maybe. 

You know how I wasn't sure what to do next with my WIP? I figured out a plan of action. Before I dive in and do yet another edit, I have one person reading through to make suggestions on which sections could stand some beefing up or fat-trimming. Meanwhile, for the last few days, I've been itching to just get in and start skimming it myself. But today I came to a solution that will work. I think. It would be a waste for me to go through and start looking for places to fix, when someone else is doing that for me. After I get back their notes, I can tackle everything. In the meantime, what's a writer to do? I'm floundering. Solution: Review a different book. I have five novels in various draft stages in my computer. I don't want to get sucked too deeply into a side project, though, so I'm going to take the one at the simplest stage and fix some background work. One of the five novels is not even a complete first draft yet. I started it to try my hand at "lett...

 Actually, I finished on the 31st of January. YAY!  I'm actually pleased with the ending I created. I know there are mountains of work to do on this novel, and editing will be at least a year of work, but for now I'm setting my draft aside and working on a shorter piece that might be quickly published. So my new process will be editing, and seeking a venue for publication, and submission. Hopefully all that can be accomplished this spring. With absolutely no knowledge on how short stories go, I'm guessing a couple months? Maybe three?  I'd love to be editing one of my other - non-gigantic - novels during the summer.  A toast to new beginnings!

I'm reading a book of the genre I believe I will ultimately be published in, and not loving it. There are few protagonists in this genre that I have found I identify with. I guess that's why I write. But it occurred to me after watching something on TV that maybe my personal bias is getting in my way. I tried envisioning the protagonist as a different race, or from a different upbringing, with different social mores bred into her from the get-go, that kind of thing. And it's better. She still drives me crazy with her bad decisions, and piling one bad thing on top of the other, but I get that it may be relatable to people. It made me realize I might be pinning my "mature adult" perspective on my own 20-something protagonist. I'll tackle that in the editing. (I'm surely close to done by now!) That's in my reading. In my writing, just today I added a tiny incident with a minor character - who wasn't even a character before, just a known entity. I was ...

I sorted out the problem from my last post. It had its purpose and I'm getting closer to the end. Closer and closer. But it still feels like the moment in a dream when you think you're coming out of a tunnel only to find that the light you were aiming for was just a light within the tunnel illuminating the next section of the tunnel.  My intention was to finish in September and spend October prepping for Nanowrimo. I participated in one of the Nanowrimo virtual write-ins for Nano Prep, and it was helpful. It's giving ideas. And I've had additional ideas, so that now I keep the notebook for this next work handy "just in case". But I still have to finish my WIP! I still struggle with lack of motivation, so some days are weak on the writing side. I need to fix that if I'm going to do 50,000 words in November! I have started writing down my word count, but since my current efforts include editing, it's a bit of a bogus count. I want to be done. I need to b...

Praise God! I'm making progress! If I don't finish this by the end of tomorrow, it'll be close, at least. I'm in the middle of a good writing-run, but wanted to pause my work to document my success. I had reached the point a couple days ago where I knew which ending (already written) I wanted to go with, but needed to finally join that part of the journey with the place where I was. I'm now heavy into the last act, and it's flowing well. That may change, of course, but right now I'm feeling very good about this long sequence of words! I even took a break from the computer to lay on the floor with a notebook and jot down the next bit. That helps. So I'm doing it. I'm getting it. The end is, once again, in sight.

Finally, I have postponed some things until September. Granted, September isn't very far away, but hopefully it's far enough. I've been trying to finish this novel (draft 1) for ages, it feels. I'm close enough now that maybe a week is enough time to get there. If not, I have some thinking to do. My brain is filled with the other WIP, the one closer to "done". I'd postponed the (hopefully-)final edit to write this beast I'm now trying to end. I only expected to postpone editing for a few months. I want to get in and finish it! So I need to set a deadline for finishing draft 1 of this current novel. The good news is, as long as it seems to be word-count-wise (the draft, that is), when I did the math, it was only 360 pages so far. That's not as outrageously long as I thought! So, after an incredibly long first draft gets edited down, I'm guessing I'll end up with about a 400 page novel.  Do-able. Definitely do-able.

That light I saw? And assumed it was the end of the tunnel nearing? It must have been a hole in the mountain, letting in some light from above ground. I am nowhere near the end. I keep digging myself - or my protagonist - into ever more convoluted holes and tunnels. Dear God, what have I wrought? Yesterday I realized what I had been writing diverged from my original scene notes, and I preferred the scene notes. But not sure that I could make it work, I duplicated the scene to work on it afresh following the old plan - keeping both until I'm sure this works. And now I've realized a new problem with getting to the ending. (smh) BUT the new problem can be saved for the actual first edit. Because although I say I am editing this, I'm really just finishing the first draft. I've done minor edits in places, but the bulk of my current work is filling in blanks and fleshing out summaries left there by my previous self of November 2019. Regardless, I am pushing myself, sp...

After much thought, some prayer, and a review of my previous notes, I have decided to begin a new project for Nanowrimo. As for the current book in review, I will continue making my notes for the next edit. However, instead of doing that edit as a November project, I will write a brand new first draft of a new novel in November, and begin the next edit of my current WIP after that. I'm happy with this plan. That gives my WIP time to sit after I make notes and before beginning the edit. It also will give the next book time to sit after writing the first draft, while I edit WIP. That may sound confusing, but it's not. This next one has been in my head for a while, but it involves some world-building, so not much is written except notes. We'll see how it goes!

We all have distractions. The trick is finding a way to move forward around or through the distractions. Lately, life has taken a turn and dropped an extra plate in my lap. Not a problem in the long run, but the last week or two has been rather chaotic trying to keep all the plates spinning on the pole and ending up dropping one or two. The good news is, I actually made some good progress in my WIP, I think. At least it's getting organized so that I can , at some point, make "good progress". The slow news is in the editing work. I sorted out my editing work in Scrivener as I needed, but then stalled. I had made a list of things that need to be done to the manuscript, and struggled with the next step. So today, I'm moving beyond that. It's very freeing to release yourself from your own rules. Who says things need to be done in a certain order? So I sat down with the printed manuscript to start putting my hand-written changes into the document, prior to diss...

Life happened this past week/weekend, so my progress slowed, but it's okay. Still plugging away at the edit almost every day. Scene by scene. I'm optimistic to finish this draft by the end of the month. Then I'll do a full proof-read and probably start looking for readers. Alpha readers? Beta readers? I'm not even sure which would be the right terminology. I'll figure it out. In addition to the recent life concerns, a friend is in town this week. She's not staying with us, and knows I'm working, but having that "I'll give you a buzz sometime" ringing in my ears always leaves me with a feeling that I don't want to get too deeply involved in any project. It feels like a personal flaw and I'm trying to overcome it. I should just do what I need to do and feel unapologetic if she calls me and I'm busy. I'll get there. The new book I started working on, slowly, as the muse strikes me, is getting to a point where I feel I need...

Not my "style" in terms of voice, but style in terms of process. Does that make sense? I figured out months ago that I don't need to create a vacuum for myself. Setting a timer is fine, but if I do that, I set it long enough to include distractions. I am an interruptible writer.  If someone comes to talk to me while I'm writing, maybe I need to hold up a finger and finish a sentence or paragraph, but the short - or even lengthy - distraction doesn't pull me totally out of my fiction. Need a refill on my beverage? Not a problem, even if I spend a few minutes absorbed in whatever's on the TV. When I get back to my writing, my groove is waiting for me. I think I'm blessed that way. I can write with noise, with activity, with the TV blasting in the next room. Well, so far, anyway. Perhaps not completely unrelated is the fact that music matters when I write. I have spotify on my laptop ( not my favorite music app, but they have long playlists and it wor...

Whew! Bought a printer last week. I had already hand-written enough to knock almost 20 pages off the print job, but what a relief to be able to print out the bulk of my manuscript. As of this morning, I have finished reading through the whole thing. The steps I am following for this first revision are: Write my original intention/goal for the first draft. Read the entire first draft (in a different format from how I entered it - handwritten and in print). Read it, stopping only for general, broad-stroke notes, not nitpicking. Write a synopsis of the story I just finished reading. Use the original intention, the notes, and the synopsis as a starting point for the second draft. Personally, after writing the synopsis, I re-read it, then highlighted bits of the synopsis that I think could be bigger plot points. Things that I recalled as I wrote the synopsis, but that seemed downplayed in the actual manuscript. Sidenote: The first step to this process that I followed seemed unne...