I am currently halfway through the first fantasy novel I have ever written. (I've actually just hit the 'this is terrible! What was I thinking?' stage...but that's besides the point) Anyway, I'm halfway through this novel and I've suddenly found myself distracted.
I know what you're thinking. Isn't it normal to be distracted? You're right, it is. Everyone gets distracted. By real life, by the people around them, even by tv shows that they've been putting off watching so they could immerse themselves in the world they've created in their heads. What do I get distracted by? New projects. That's right, new projects.
In case you were wondering, I currently have three projects on the go. One that has the first novel written and is awaiting edits. A second that I'm halfway through the first novel, and a third that I'm writing with a friend that I'm awaiting his chapters on so I can write my chapters. So I need a new project about as much as a fish needs a bicycle.
Unfortunately now that a new project has planted itself in my brain, it refuses to leave. And alone with plots and possible settings that have me stumped, but still somehow distract me from my current novel, I have ten (Yep...ten...) characters who have yet to be named shouting at me to write their stories already.
I've offered to let certain friends take these unnamed characters and half thought out plots off my hands, but they have informed me that they have enough of their own characters to feed and take care of.
So now instead of concentrating on the scene at hand and writing terrible first draft...um...I mean brilliant first draft scenes, I'm writing about one character while thinking about another one altogether. This makes for very frustrating writing bouts where my fingers are trying to type the wrong words because I have two stories running through my head.
What do I do? I'm going to ignore the new characters with their unfinished plots and undecided settings and concentrate on my current novel. And if they get too demanding of my attention? I'm planning on threatening them with extinction. With never writing their story. I'm hoping this shuts them up for long enough for me to get my current novel written. If not, well, if you see me talking to myself in the streets, just walk away.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
My Muse and Inspiration
I don't know about you, but I often find that I have a heard time sitting down to write. I do everything I feel like I need to do in order to set up a good writing atmosphere. I turn on music. I turn off the TV. I leave twitter running, which might be a bad thing, but I have to stay connected. At least, that's what I tell myself. Then I open up scrivener (my current word processor of choice)...and stare blankly at the screen.
Oh, I write. At least a little bit. I'll get some words down that I will glare at because they're not doing exactly as I want them to do. Usually I get frustrated after about half an hour where I've written maybe a couple hundred words and I start playing a game to distract myself. I tell myself it's to give myself time to think. This is, of course, a lie. I am doing anything and everything in my power to not be writing right at that minute.
Even time deadlines do nothing for me. I've tried write or die. I really have. While it does pull more words out of me in a shorter time period, I can't quite force myself to continue writing afterward. In fact, I think, I should do another session, and instead start watching a show or even reading, telling myself that I'm ahead and that thousand words I just wrote was good enough for the day.
There is something you should know about me. Something I never knew about myself until November. In fact, before November I actually believed the exact opposite of myself. I thrive on competition. And by thrive, I mean THRIVE.
In the same half hour that I would sit and get maybe 800 words staring blankly at my screen, by simply adding another person writing with me, I get 1800 words. It's sad, but it's the truth.
Just so you know, I don't sit in front of my computer thinking 'I have to beat the rest of them!' actually, I really don't know what I think about while I'm #wordmongering. It's as if my mind just clears and pours out the words that it refuses to give up without that competition.
Maybe it's my muse. She is the most unreliable muse I've ever met. Not that I've met a lot of muses. This is just what I've heard. She takes off at the most inopportune of times. In fact for years she wasn't anything more than a voice in the back of my head that whispered maybe a couple days a year. Now that I've found a way to keep her yelling, how can I stop?
#wordmongering has jumped my word count for my current novel to over 50k since May 1st. Competition keeps me engaged with my characters. Keeps me wanting to know more about the plot and how everything is going to turn out. It makes me brainstorm so that I'm never without something to work on. It makes me research. Yep. Research. Rather ironic considering the fact that I decided to write a fantasy novel for the very specific reason that I can make up everything I'm writing. And now I'm planning on spending Saturday in the library with a pile of books about 12th century weaponry and war strategies.
My point to all of this? I found my inspiration. The one thing that keeps us, as writers, moving forward. As strange as competition for inspiration may sound, it works for me. And it working is really all that matters. As a writer, my sole objective is to keep writing. Whether or not I ever get published has nothing to do with it. As long as my muse thrives on competition (and my #wordmongering tweeps continue to provide that competition) I will write. And that's all that really matters.
Oh, I write. At least a little bit. I'll get some words down that I will glare at because they're not doing exactly as I want them to do. Usually I get frustrated after about half an hour where I've written maybe a couple hundred words and I start playing a game to distract myself. I tell myself it's to give myself time to think. This is, of course, a lie. I am doing anything and everything in my power to not be writing right at that minute.
Even time deadlines do nothing for me. I've tried write or die. I really have. While it does pull more words out of me in a shorter time period, I can't quite force myself to continue writing afterward. In fact, I think, I should do another session, and instead start watching a show or even reading, telling myself that I'm ahead and that thousand words I just wrote was good enough for the day.
There is something you should know about me. Something I never knew about myself until November. In fact, before November I actually believed the exact opposite of myself. I thrive on competition. And by thrive, I mean THRIVE.
In the same half hour that I would sit and get maybe 800 words staring blankly at my screen, by simply adding another person writing with me, I get 1800 words. It's sad, but it's the truth.
Just so you know, I don't sit in front of my computer thinking 'I have to beat the rest of them!' actually, I really don't know what I think about while I'm #wordmongering. It's as if my mind just clears and pours out the words that it refuses to give up without that competition.
Maybe it's my muse. She is the most unreliable muse I've ever met. Not that I've met a lot of muses. This is just what I've heard. She takes off at the most inopportune of times. In fact for years she wasn't anything more than a voice in the back of my head that whispered maybe a couple days a year. Now that I've found a way to keep her yelling, how can I stop?
#wordmongering has jumped my word count for my current novel to over 50k since May 1st. Competition keeps me engaged with my characters. Keeps me wanting to know more about the plot and how everything is going to turn out. It makes me brainstorm so that I'm never without something to work on. It makes me research. Yep. Research. Rather ironic considering the fact that I decided to write a fantasy novel for the very specific reason that I can make up everything I'm writing. And now I'm planning on spending Saturday in the library with a pile of books about 12th century weaponry and war strategies.
My point to all of this? I found my inspiration. The one thing that keeps us, as writers, moving forward. As strange as competition for inspiration may sound, it works for me. And it working is really all that matters. As a writer, my sole objective is to keep writing. Whether or not I ever get published has nothing to do with it. As long as my muse thrives on competition (and my #wordmongering tweeps continue to provide that competition) I will write. And that's all that really matters.
Monday, May 16, 2011
My Characters Talk To Me...Sometimes
Characters. They're the backbone of any story you write. Whether it be flash, short, novella or novel. You have to have them. The problem with characters is that sometimes you can't get them to shut up.
Take, for instance, Kaszet, one of the female leads in the novel I am currently working on. When I originally conceived of this character, I thought she was a one off. Just a passing character required only for a scene I know I would have to eventually write. She didn't even have a name. She meant nothing to me.
Except that my brain kept circling back around to her. At the time I thought 'yeah, okay, I can give her a name. Why not?' What I didn't realize was that giving her a name would lead to her being the third main character in my book (and actually quite possibly my favorite). She started speaking to me, and she just wouldn't shut up! I know more about her background than any of my other characters!
Thankfully this all came to me when I was still in the planning stages of the novel, which meant that I wasn't having to go back and do a lot of rewrites. And, on the plus side, it was a character that I knew I could write well, because if I did something wrong, she was never going to let me forget it (which is strange, as she really isn't all that talkative in the book...)
Then there are characters like Kaidyn. Kaidyn showed up in my plot without my realizing he was going to be there. Like Kaszet he was unplanned and was unnamed. Just a passing character. It was when he named himself that I realized I was in trouble.
Problem is, Kaidyn isn't nearly as chatty as Kaszet. In fact, I know only his name and who his father is. That's it. He's not giving anything else up. Not his age. Not his goals. And certainly not his role in the story. It's annoying. I've been sitting writing possible scenarios for him for hours in my notebook, and nothing feels right.
He makes me miss characters like Kaszet.
I won't give up on him, though. Despite his stubborn muteness, I know that he's going to be important. I just have to dig a little deeper. Question him a little harder. Perhaps break a few fingers. But eventually I will figure out why he jumped into my story.
Characters. Can't live with 'em, can't write a book without 'em. Go figure.
Take, for instance, Kaszet, one of the female leads in the novel I am currently working on. When I originally conceived of this character, I thought she was a one off. Just a passing character required only for a scene I know I would have to eventually write. She didn't even have a name. She meant nothing to me.
Except that my brain kept circling back around to her. At the time I thought 'yeah, okay, I can give her a name. Why not?' What I didn't realize was that giving her a name would lead to her being the third main character in my book (and actually quite possibly my favorite). She started speaking to me, and she just wouldn't shut up! I know more about her background than any of my other characters!
Thankfully this all came to me when I was still in the planning stages of the novel, which meant that I wasn't having to go back and do a lot of rewrites. And, on the plus side, it was a character that I knew I could write well, because if I did something wrong, she was never going to let me forget it (which is strange, as she really isn't all that talkative in the book...)
Then there are characters like Kaidyn. Kaidyn showed up in my plot without my realizing he was going to be there. Like Kaszet he was unplanned and was unnamed. Just a passing character. It was when he named himself that I realized I was in trouble.
Problem is, Kaidyn isn't nearly as chatty as Kaszet. In fact, I know only his name and who his father is. That's it. He's not giving anything else up. Not his age. Not his goals. And certainly not his role in the story. It's annoying. I've been sitting writing possible scenarios for him for hours in my notebook, and nothing feels right.
He makes me miss characters like Kaszet.
I won't give up on him, though. Despite his stubborn muteness, I know that he's going to be important. I just have to dig a little deeper. Question him a little harder. Perhaps break a few fingers. But eventually I will figure out why he jumped into my story.
Characters. Can't live with 'em, can't write a book without 'em. Go figure.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Brainstorming, Plots and Word Mongering
Remember English class in High School? When your teacher would give you an assignment of writing a short story and caution you to hand in your Brainstorming because you would lose marks if you didn't? I do. I remember because I never handed in my brainstorming. This would probably have something to do with the fact that I never did my brainstorming. Just sat down and wrote, then handed it in. I'd get it back every single time with red words scrawled across about how next time I needed to hand in my brainstorming. I didn't care. I hated doing it. I though it was a waste of my time.
I LOVE brainstorming. I do it all the time. Right now, in fact, I have no less than three notebooks on my desk with brainstorming from three different projects scrawled inside. Why am I telling you this? So that you can understand that as I'm writing my newest novel, I have come to realize that writing, like anything else you do, is a learning process.
I'm not certain why I always thought that writers knew exactly what they were doing the first time they put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it may be) but I did. I was so certain of this, in fact, that before November I never let myself finish anything I started simply because I assumed it was utter crap. (Don't get me wrong, it was utter crap. I recently had the utter horror...uh...absolute pleasure...of reading a story I wrote about five years ago. Let's just say I'm sorry that anyone ever read it...)
I also found I was getting stuck on decision. (I should tell you, I'm actually quite indecisive. It took me about two months to make up my mind to start a blog. Why? Who knows. But here we are.)
Anyway, my point is that I have discovered the answer to both of these walls that I had built up in my head. Just as I learned how important brainstorming can be (especially when a character I did not plan shows up in my books and somehow ends up being important, but I don't know why), I've learned how to get over these other hurdles.
Plotting, something I barely gave any thought to before, has now become what I spend a lot of time doing now. Each of my books is meticulously planned out before I start writing. (I'd like to point out that I say meticulous, but what I mean is, I think I know what's going to happen and then I actually write it and it all goes to hell...just saying, but don't expect your characters or your stories to go exactly to plan. It wont.) I do this so that I don't have to stop in the middle of my writing groove to make a vital decision that I should have known about before I started writing.
And word mongering. Aah, word mongering (For all you twitterites out there, that's the hashtag #wordmongering) A fantastic group of people that get together via twitter every hour on the hour to write as much as we can for half an hour than compare word counts. It's fantastic.
For those of you that worry about us turning writing into a competition, let me reassure you now. While we are competitive, it is a friend competition. While we compare and one person may get bragging rights, the point is to support each other, not knock each other down. Also, some of us...not saying who...just some of us apparently respond to competition. Don't knock it 'till you try it!
Word mongering allows me to turn off my brain (not too far off, I am still writing after all. Just enough to make my inner editor shut up) enough to get the words on the page. And, despite my one time belief of first drafts being perfect, I have come to embrace the very idea behind NaNoWriMo: You can edit crap. You can't edit nothing. Getting those words on the page is the first step. You can fix your mistakes later.
Happy Brainstorming.
I LOVE brainstorming. I do it all the time. Right now, in fact, I have no less than three notebooks on my desk with brainstorming from three different projects scrawled inside. Why am I telling you this? So that you can understand that as I'm writing my newest novel, I have come to realize that writing, like anything else you do, is a learning process.
I'm not certain why I always thought that writers knew exactly what they were doing the first time they put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it may be) but I did. I was so certain of this, in fact, that before November I never let myself finish anything I started simply because I assumed it was utter crap. (Don't get me wrong, it was utter crap. I recently had the utter horror...uh...absolute pleasure...of reading a story I wrote about five years ago. Let's just say I'm sorry that anyone ever read it...)
I also found I was getting stuck on decision. (I should tell you, I'm actually quite indecisive. It took me about two months to make up my mind to start a blog. Why? Who knows. But here we are.)
Anyway, my point is that I have discovered the answer to both of these walls that I had built up in my head. Just as I learned how important brainstorming can be (especially when a character I did not plan shows up in my books and somehow ends up being important, but I don't know why), I've learned how to get over these other hurdles.
Plotting, something I barely gave any thought to before, has now become what I spend a lot of time doing now. Each of my books is meticulously planned out before I start writing. (I'd like to point out that I say meticulous, but what I mean is, I think I know what's going to happen and then I actually write it and it all goes to hell...just saying, but don't expect your characters or your stories to go exactly to plan. It wont.) I do this so that I don't have to stop in the middle of my writing groove to make a vital decision that I should have known about before I started writing.
And word mongering. Aah, word mongering (For all you twitterites out there, that's the hashtag #wordmongering) A fantastic group of people that get together via twitter every hour on the hour to write as much as we can for half an hour than compare word counts. It's fantastic.
For those of you that worry about us turning writing into a competition, let me reassure you now. While we are competitive, it is a friend competition. While we compare and one person may get bragging rights, the point is to support each other, not knock each other down. Also, some of us...not saying who...just some of us apparently respond to competition. Don't knock it 'till you try it!
Word mongering allows me to turn off my brain (not too far off, I am still writing after all. Just enough to make my inner editor shut up) enough to get the words on the page. And, despite my one time belief of first drafts being perfect, I have come to embrace the very idea behind NaNoWriMo: You can edit crap. You can't edit nothing. Getting those words on the page is the first step. You can fix your mistakes later.
Happy Brainstorming.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Milestones
Welcome to the first blog from me. Epic Robot Danni. That's right. Epic robot.
I suppose I should start with an explanation. Epic Robot. I know what you're thinking. Huh? Where did I get that from. Let me tell you. In November I participated in something called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) or as you writers probably call it : The month where all normal life activities (aside from eating and sleeping...though less on the sleeping) comes to a sudden screeching halt.
For those of you who are not writers, NaNoWriMo's goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. So how does that tie in with my nickname? Well...I wrote 150,000 words in November and was awarded Calgary's most likely to become a nano robot award. Then when it was mentioned that I should add 'Epic' to the title (after a particularly productive wordmongering session) I couldn't help myself.
Hence Epic Robot was born. That's me!!
Now that you know a little bit more about me, let's talk about the blog, shall we? I've come to the realization as of late that I may need a way to get away from the actual serious writing and do something a little bit more fun. Maybe even where I can post my progress and see if anyone (at all) cares. Plus, everyone and their dog has a blog, and I was beginning to feel left out.
So, here we are. With a brand new blog, all shiny and pretty and named awesomely, and I'm left with the final question that I probably should have thought of first: What the hell am I going to write about?
Writing. Yep. Writing. More specifically, my writing. Or, of course, anything that randomly pops into my mind after reading other blogs (which happens.) But mostly it's going to be about the milestones of writing. All of my firsts as a writer.
First #1: Finish a novel (completed in November 2010)
First #2: Edit a novel to a second draft (completed December 2010)
First #3: Enter a novel in ABNA (completed January 2011)
So far that's all I've got for firsts (For any of you that care, I made it to the top 250 of ABNA out of 5000 in the YA portion before being kicked out. Not bad for a first attempt!) I have many other firsts that I look forward to (including sending out my first query letter...scary) and I'm hoping to share my journey with you.
I suppose I should start with an explanation. Epic Robot. I know what you're thinking. Huh? Where did I get that from. Let me tell you. In November I participated in something called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) or as you writers probably call it : The month where all normal life activities (aside from eating and sleeping...though less on the sleeping) comes to a sudden screeching halt.
For those of you who are not writers, NaNoWriMo's goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. So how does that tie in with my nickname? Well...I wrote 150,000 words in November and was awarded Calgary's most likely to become a nano robot award. Then when it was mentioned that I should add 'Epic' to the title (after a particularly productive wordmongering session) I couldn't help myself.
Hence Epic Robot was born. That's me!!
Now that you know a little bit more about me, let's talk about the blog, shall we? I've come to the realization as of late that I may need a way to get away from the actual serious writing and do something a little bit more fun. Maybe even where I can post my progress and see if anyone (at all) cares. Plus, everyone and their dog has a blog, and I was beginning to feel left out.
So, here we are. With a brand new blog, all shiny and pretty and named awesomely, and I'm left with the final question that I probably should have thought of first: What the hell am I going to write about?
Writing. Yep. Writing. More specifically, my writing. Or, of course, anything that randomly pops into my mind after reading other blogs (which happens.) But mostly it's going to be about the milestones of writing. All of my firsts as a writer.
First #1: Finish a novel (completed in November 2010)
First #2: Edit a novel to a second draft (completed December 2010)
First #3: Enter a novel in ABNA (completed January 2011)
So far that's all I've got for firsts (For any of you that care, I made it to the top 250 of ABNA out of 5000 in the YA portion before being kicked out. Not bad for a first attempt!) I have many other firsts that I look forward to (including sending out my first query letter...scary) and I'm hoping to share my journey with you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)