Author
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
Not much to say here. I’ve been more worried about writing than actually writing this week. The month overall wasn’t too bad, but I was in a weird sort of flux between the fanfic I’m working on in first draft (100k in and about 1/3 of the way through, so looking to be a very long one) and planning my NaNo novel — I prefer being old school and writing a whole complete novel from start to finish during the month. There’s a certain cadence and rhythm to doing it that way.
I don’t do actual plotting unless I’m in the mood (I find that once I start writing, I end up tossing much of what I’ve planned), but I do like to know the characters and setting. I did a lot of setting work this month. I write these on Sunday, so today is actually 10/31, which means NaNo has not yet started. I do want to get a slightly better idea of the plot before I start, as well as getting to know some of the characters a little better, even though I know who they all are (well, the important ones, anyway).
Blurb. Blurb is MUCH harder than title. The title can be hard, but often one will just come, and if it doesn’t I can play around with different ideas until one does. I also have more practice with titles than blurbs since I am still mostly in the first draft phase — or, at least, pre-revision phase (most of my first drafts are done, but I haven’t started revising them yet — I’m over 5 years into my first real revision).
With characters, it’s the opposite, though. I find it much easier to summarize who the characters are than to name them. That’s one of the big problems I am running into right now with planning this NaNo novel – I have a very good sense of who and what the characters are, but no idea what their names are!
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for the November 3 posting of the IWSG are Kim Lajevardi, Victoria Marie Lees, Joylene Nowell Butler, Erika Beebe, and Lee Lowery!
So this past week was my birthday week. I had some plans, but they all kind of fell through. The cabin where I was going to stay had poor management, and I spent way too much time trying to find where to check in, then find where the actual cabin was, and then try to figure out how to keep warm… There was a thermostat on the wall, but it didn’t seem to work, and a very empty and ashy fireplace with no instructions. So then I came home, expecting that if I couldn’t have a nice night in the cabin, at least I’d have more time during the day to do nifty stuff… But then my stomach rebelled. I have a stomach condition with occasional episodes, but I hadn’t had an episode in forever it seems, but no, of course it had to come back then. Thankfully, I was able to sleep through it (the usual best course of action if it works), but that meant I got up at 3pm feeling groggy and not quite well. Needless to say, not much got done.
My actual birthday, though, was the day before all of this, and I had a lovely dinner with my parents and then we watched Forrest Gump — this was the first time I’ve seen it, and it’s a movie I have long thought I needed to see. It did not disappoint, so my actual birthday turned out quite nice.
This feels like opening a can of worms. I don’t have too many limits in my actual writing. Maybe I should have more. I do have limits around writing, though. One of my hard limits is never to speak poorly of other writers, especially about their writing. Their character — thankfully, I have not actually met any writers of bad character, though I have heard many horror stories. But even there, I would not reveal names unless I was warning a particular person about someone who might harm them specifically. Again, I haven’t had the need to do anything like that. All the writers I’ve met have been great people as well. That may change if I ever have any success.
As far as the actual topic goes, though, I don’t really have lines. I will say I tend not to swear much, but that isn’t because of a line I’ve drawn, it’s more that I just don’t swear that much, and I find excessive swearing to be uninteresting. It’s not a moral opposition to swearing, although I was a teacher at one point, so have also made it a habit to not swear for that setting, which surely affects my swearing today.
As for topics, I don’t have many limits there, either. The only thing I tend not to write is pure autobiographical stuff because, again, I find it boring. I already lived my life; when I read and write, I want to live other lives.
So, in the end, I guess I only have one limit in my writing: boredom. I don’t write stuff that bores me (at least not on purpose). And while others may say that confusing the reader is the worst thing a writer can do, I still maintain that boring the reader is much worse. After all, sometimes I want confusion, but I never want boredom.
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for the October 6 posting of the IWSG are Jemima Pett, J Lenni Dorner, Cathrina Constantine, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, and Mary Aalgaard!
This week went pretty well. I had a few days with words in the double digits — for example, I wrote 21 words on Wednesday — but still making progress overall. This part of the story is difficult because I am trying to mix different things together that have already been written in a way that truly fits the new story, but also includes all the stuff I need to include. So, the process is a bit more painstaking than usual. But overall, still good progress, still moving forward.
I love this question. It is really making me think. There are three things I want to discuss here, because I think they are all factors. 1) It depends on my emotional state, to be honest. What is a “success” one day, may be short of success another. 2) Because I am still writing new things, the goal posts are always changing. And perhaps most important 3) It would be better to have a more objective measurement.
In the end, no matter what goes on with any of those, what matters most is having a positive impact on the reader, knowing that they connected with my work and loved it. The problem is: how do we know this?
On fanfiction sites, and Amazon to a lesser extent, we can look at reviews. Having a positive review is clearly evidence of success with that particular reader. Kudos or star ratings without an accompanying review can also say so. But number of reads or buys… That I think is less indicative, even though that’s how we are paid. But all that tells us is that someone bought it or started to read it. We don’t know, from that number, whether they actually liked it. If the ONLY type of advertising was word-of-mouth, maybe because then it would mean that later buyers bought it because of other people who liked it… But in reality, there are so many other reasons someone might decide to take a chance on the book.
So yes, for me, real success is that connection with a reader.
But that’s not actually something I can control, so instead, I prefer to look at success based on what I have actually achieved — and I’m not doing so well there. My current goal is to finish my revision of Cipher, but I keep writing other things instead of revising. I’ve been stuck at this block (what I’m calling the revision block) for a long time now, and I haven’t found a good way to get past it.
The thing is, I do feel success every time I finish something, whether it is a short story, a novel first draft, etc. That is definitely a kind of success. But that’s an example of the goal posts changing. It used to be that finishing a first draft was the main goal. Once I achieved that, it became the revision. And so on. I think it is important for me to keep looking forward to the next goal, to see if I can succeed at that; and if I don’t, try again, as they say.
And despite my insecurity (hey, this is for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group!), I don’t actually feel like I have failed at writing. I have almost no sales, but I keep writing, and it keeps making me happy, and when I do share things, there are people who like it. And in the end, that is its own kind of success.
Would I like to make money? Yes, of course. I’d love to make enough that I could go down to 30 hours at my day job (to keep benefits) and have more time to write. But I don’t feel like a failure just because that hasn’t happened yet.
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for the September 1 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, T. Powell Coltrin @Journaling Woman, Natalie Aguirre, Karen Lynn, and C. Lee McKenzie!
I am still writing fanfiction, and up until Sunday, was working on a fan fiction piece for Camp NaNoWriMo, which is a month-long writing challenge. You can set your own goal unlike the main NaNoWriMo, which happens in November. I decided on 62,000 words because July has thirty-one days, so that came to 2,000 words per day. I ended the month with 64,414 so that was a success! I never have problems getting much higher word counts in November, but Camps — well, I tend to “lose” them more than win (though, I do hold with the philosophy that the only true loss is not writing at all, so I still consider my other Camps wins). I also usually do editing/revision, but even the times I’ve done new fiction, I tend not to have the same level of motivation in July that I have in November, and I also tend not to set aside as much non-writing stuff as I do in November (such as cooking — I do a lot of food prep/freezing in October, but not June — and work — I often take off several days in November for extra writing time). Anyway, very happy with the success, even though the story is not done. It actually is probably going to end up being split, too, so I guess I finished one and started the next – I am just to Scene 16, and very much near the beginning.
I don’t actually have a book like that. I tend not to reread my fiction writing books, and lately, haven’t even finished them. I spend more time on Holly Lisle’s writing classes, and review them a lot, so probably the most useful of those is How To Revise Your Novel, which is a huge class and really, really hard, but so many of my epitomes in writing have come from that class, such as finally understanding, what, exactly, a subplot is. It is so obvious now that I don’t know why other explanations didn’t work, but they didn’t.
What I really want to talk about today, though, is a new understanding of my own planning/first draft writing practice, which came to me last week. I realized that I could call my approach the Snowball Method.
I wasn’t deliberately trying to compare it to the Snowflake Method, which is a very well-known plotting method, but once I came up with the term, I realized how well it fits.
The idea is that you start with just a small ball of snow, pack it into a small snowball, and then send it down the mountain where it develops momentum and becomes huge, or, in the case of novel-writing, a whole, complete novel.
So, first, you need the mountain. That, to me, is the setting. I need to build up the setting before I begin. I need to know how the world works. What things people normally do in the world. This can involve research if I am working in the real world, as well as an understanding of how magic and fantasy creatures behave if there is any type of fantastical element.
Next, you need the snow. The snow, in my conception, is the characters. This typically involves the protagonist, the antagonist, and maybe one or two other characters. In mystery novels, I typically don’t like to know who really did it, so “antagonist” ends up being at least five different people. The victim counts as an antagonist because they have the answers that the detective needs, and then I develop at least four different suspects. I give all four (or more) the means, motive, and opportunity for killing the victim. So, for a mystery, I usually have one protagonist (the detective), plus the victim, plus at least four suspects.
Once you have a snowy mountain, then, you need to do some shaping. This can be as minimal as just starting your first scene, or it can be more detailed. I often put up occasional sign posts to pass – major events that I know I want to happen. Sometimes I plan in more detail, so it ends up looking more like a slalom course. For some time now, I have realized that it is pointless for me to outline the second half of the book in much detail because by the time it gets to that point, none of my plans are at all relevant, and I am too lazy to rework my outline, as some writers do.
I do do a fair amount of planning-as-I go. I use the scene template from another Holly Lisle class: How to Write A Novel, which is extremely useful for scene planning. She recommends planning about 3-5 scenes in advance, but I usually end up with more like 1-3. I find that the further out I go (so the third scene in that list) the less I know about what I actually need, so those end up being 3-5 scenes on their own because as I am writing, I realize I cannot quite jump to the end I had planned without a couple of other “ends” before that.
And sometimes, if the writing is just flowing, I don’t even bother doing scene planning.
I also will come up with ideas while writing for parts MUCH later in the book. And so at the bottom of my document (I write in one long document in FocusWriter when drafting), I often have a list of things I want to remember to add in at later points in the story.
So, these are the gate posts that the snowball needs to roll through.
But the key ingredient in this method is momentum. The more I write, the more momentum I have, and this is the reason that I write in one long document, even though I break it up with stars to indicate scene breaks. Rereading is crucial for me, even if it is only the last paragraph of the previous scene. Sometimes, I actually reread quite extensively. Some people can’t do this without being bogged down in editing. Thankfully, I use the [FIX THIS LATER] brackets, so I can just get what I need from the reread. I do occasionally correct easy-to-fix things like grammar or typos, or if I get a new idea that bridges to a scene I wrote later, I might add that. I don’t delete anything, though, because it’s all snow… And who knows, I might need to put it back on the snowball at a later point.
Anyway, so that’s it – the Snowball Method! Hopefully, it will be of use to someone.
This week, I have been working on fan fiction for Camp Nano. I am combining 3 stories I have already written or at least partially written, and then adding in a new one. Only counting new words for Camp, of course. And very glad that I found a way to eventually post the extremely self-indulgent piece I’ve become the most attached to! But, because it is so much fun, I am not much in the mood for blogging and want to get right back to it. So, this week’s IWSG offering is slim. As for the optional question about what would make me stop writing: all I could come up with were things that caused actual inability to write, such as losing my mind or being in a coma or something. And even then, I’d probably resort to making up stories in my head…
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for the July 7 posting of the IWSG are Pat Garcia, Victoria Marie Lees, and Louise – Fundy Blue!
“You’ve been neglecting me,” Nadya says, taking a seat opposite me in the Student Center. I look down at the sheet of music in front of me and scratch my head. This piece isn’t coming out the way I want it.
“Neglecting you? We’ve been practicing every night. Your voice is golden, babe,” I say, then look back at the sheet.
She pulls it out from under me, my pencil making a long dark mark.
“Look at me.”
My eyes met hers. Blue, intense. I remembered our first meeting, the little comment about the professor, the way her jeans clung to her. The way my heart began to race, imagining what we could be together.
“Let’s forget this for tonight,” she said, balling the paper up and throwing it in the trash. “One night. Please. I miss…” she paused, a suggestive smile dancing around her lips, “you know.”
One night turned into two, then fourteen. Two months went by.
Meanwhile, the music, well. I hadn’t been writing any. Or playing any, at least not outside the band practices. And those… didn’t go well. The other guys noticed my inattention, and hers. Rehearsals found me making the same mistakes over and over again
“We need a new singer,” the drummer said one night. “Or a new lead guitarist. Or both.”
The others nodded their heads. “You either need to get your head back in the game, or we need to find us a new group.”
I promised I would, but she didn’t. I didn’t lose her, though. Instead, I forced my self to limit my time. Practicing took time, but I needed it as much as I needed her company. And she helped me practice occasionally, if I made it clear that I couldn’t just give in to the waves of passion.
We found another lead singer, and Nadya became our biggest fan.
The End.
Well, I seem to be in a bit of a writing slump. Last week was worse than the week before, and this week is worse than last week, so… Hopefully I can turn it around by next week?
In any case, I have shifted a little, and have been exploring my Craft again. I have a new wand that I am planning to consecrate at Midsummer (so this weekend) and then have been working on a very intense Lammas Sacrifice ritual. My tradition explores various mysteries at the Great Days, and Lammas is for Sacrifice. It’s getting into some work that I haven’t done in a very, very long time, so I am hoping I can pull it off. Of course, that has taken my attention away from my writing, and I’m still mainly writing the fanfiction anyway.
I hate to say it, but this week has been even less productive than last week. I’m still working on the self-indulgent non-postable fanfiction piece, but spending more time reading other people’s stories instead of my own. Oh well, there are always cycles aren’t there? I am hoping to get back into revision, but probably not this week. We’ll see.
Music has been really important to me with this story. It was when I started it all those years ago, and it is now again. I’ve been writing to what I am calling my short dark cello playlist. It starts with Barber’s Adagio, then goes into Yo Yo Ma Solo, and finishes with Nothing Else Matters – a cello cover of the Metallica song performed by Apocalyptica. Barber isn’t all cello, of course, but it has the same “darkness” as the others.
I’ve also been lighting rose candles and dragonsblood incense. It’s been a very sensual week.
Well, this week was unproductive. It’s not so much that I haven’t been writing, but rather what I have been writing. Which is a particular fanfiction piece I started over ten years ago — around 2006 I think, but not 100% sure. There’s nothing wrong with fanfiction in general, and at some point, I may put a link to my work if people are interested, but for the moment, I am not sure about it. But this particular fanfiction piece… I can’t post it because it’s basically a fanfiction of another fanfiction, and starts in the middle of the other author’s chapter 20. Yeah. So, there is absolutely no future for this story.
But I am loving it. And I’ve done some revision, and I have some scenes that absolutely blow me away, so I am kind of stuck on it at the moment. It’s also incredibly self-indulgent.
So, there you go: writer writing exclusively for the pure pleasure of it. And: we need those sometimes.
This is a good question, so I am happy to answer it. I don’t have a specific amount of time. It takes me over 5 years to revise a novel so far (I started my current revision, the only one that I haven’t given up on, in July 2015 and I’m still not done with in). In the meantime, I have written five additional first draft novels, which, obviously, I have not started revising yet. I also had about 10 first draft novels before that one. So, basically, I start revising when I’m done with the previous revision.
As far as ideals go, I think I would like to have at least a month. But, for now, it’s going to continue being years… Until I get faster at revision.
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for the June 2 posting of the IWSG are J Lenni Dorner, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, Lee Lowery, and Rachna Chhabria!