A Brief Overture

So...I may have missed my post on Wednesday.  Honestly, I don't even have a good excuse for why.  I was home (having had some plans cancelled) and all I did all night was watch shows.  I didn't even write.  So why couldn't I get words down to post on my blog?

I think it may have been lack of inspiration.  It's been months since I've missed a post, and as much as I love posting twice a week, lets face it, sometimes it's hard to come up with things to write about that I haven't already said a million and a half times.

But here I am posting today (though I actually don't have a firm topic for this post...you may have noticed already).  I'm getting back on track.

In that spirit, I thought I would tell you all just what my goals (and plans) are for the next month.

October is probably going to be just as busy as August was, except that critique group is still meeting, which means that I have to have two submissions for the course of the month.  The first is going to be a short story that I wrote and submitted to an online magazine.  The magazine in question has yet to get back to me, and has told all submitters that if they wish to send their stories out to other publishers, they understand.  I have decided that it's just been too long for them to have not gotten back to me and will be withdrawing my submission and shopping it in other markets.  As I view this story as one of the best things I've ever written, I'm hoping that it will get published.

For the second submission, I have no idea what I'm going to send in.  Originally I was planning on writing another short story to submit, but now that I'm looking over my month, I'm thinking that idea is going to be just about as smart as thinking I could do Camp Nano in August.  In other words: that's a dumb idea...so I'm still working on that.  If my month goes the way I expect it to go, I doubt it's going to happen.

We will be moving at the end of the month (lame...I hate moving).  This wasn't exactly our choice, and we will be moving further away from my work, which means my drive is about to double (and take me on roads I don't particularly enjoy driving on.) But I'm grateful that we have a home and we're not scrambling to find somewhere to live.  Unfortunately not only does that take a day for the actual move, but then there's the packing and the unpacking involved.  Coupled with the weekend getaway to my grandmother's house and all the other random little plans I make on a week to week basis, I'm worried about getting any of my work done, never mind anything else.

Pandora, my novel that I'm trying to edit, isn't going as well as I had hoped.  I have four chapters left to edit, and it's the last day that I was supposed to be working on the second draft.  I have already done two chapters today, though, and I have a friend working with me online.  I'm hopeful that I'll get it done tonight (and by hopeful I mean that I'm going to be frantically editing for most of the night before falling in to bed exhausted.) but I don't know if I actually will.  Wish me luck!

I have been plucking away at the planning for my fourth and final novel for nano.  So far my lineup is: Stolen Magick, Aliens Stole My Socks, Betraying Eden and Birth.  Birth is the one I'm currently working on.  I have some brainstorming done, but I'm actually ahead of schedule on that one.  I wasn't even supposed to start the planning until tomorrow, so I'm not too worried.  But I need to make sure I don't get behind in those goals.

This month is going to be hectic, but I'm hoping that I still manage to get everything done.  Now I just need to go finish the second draft of Pandora.

What are your goals for the month of October?  Are you going to join us in our blog post a day challenge in November?

August Is So Not My Month

When I signed up for Camp Nano this August, I knew that it wasn't going to be easy to get through it.  I had a busy month planned from the get go with a wedding to attend, a writers conference calling my name, a couple of birthdays demanding my attention, and all the random other little things that make up my existence.  It was going to be a busy month, but I was sure that I could power through it.

So, here it is, the fifth day of the month, and I'm TOTALLY powering through it.

Except that totally is a bit of an exaggeration.  And powering through should be more like floundering and wondering what the hell I signed myself up for this time.

Last year I did both sessions of Camp Nano.  I managed to finish July's, but August only managed to pull 17k words out of me before I was done for the month.  It's a sad story for me, the girl who can usually write upwards of 200k in a month, but it's what happened.

This year I thought I would be ready for it.  I had a plan for both months (last year I wrote a single novel between the two months, and never ended up finishing it because it was that bad.  They walked for the entire thing, and there wasn't nearly enough description for me to claim I was pulling a Tolkien, so it was abandoned.) and I was going to finish both of them, damnit!

Well, I got through June with 120k.  In fact, I finished the novel I was working on and actually started a second novel because I had time left over.  It wasn't anything that I planned, so it hasn't really gone anywhere, but I started it!  I didn't even write for the last week because I was having some serious computer problems.

After that, I thought that August would be a piece of cake.  Simple, easy.  I could blow right through it without even stopping to get gas or pick up another bottle of pop to get me through those last few kilometers.

Apparently I was wrong.  At the risk of someone hunting me down and killing me for saying this, I'm sitting at only 17,464 words written for the month.  (No, don't grab your weapons.  Remember, my goal is 5k a day, not 1667 that most nanoers go for.  I'm the crazy girl that doesn't understand the concept of writing less than 150k in a month....)  Which puts me firmly 8k below my current goal.  Adding in tomorrow's 5k that brings me up to 13k that I need to somehow make up.


Why am I not writing right now?  Now that's a funny story.  My inner editor -- the one that I have actually constructed a cage for that you wouldn't believe -- is screaming at me.  She escaped, you see, and she's determined to ruin my enjoyment of Camp Nano.


I've written nearly 6k today, all of which I am absolutely certain is crap, not to mention the rest of the 11k that was already done that I'm pretty sure should just be tossed in the garbage and forgotten ever existed.


With that frame of mind, I gave up on the idea of pounding out the last 4k that would have made catching up a little easier (especially with the writing conference next weekend...I'm never finishing this novel, am I?) I figure it's safer to take a step back today, spend tomorrow hunting down the damned inner editor once more and making sure the padlock is secured, then getting back to writing when I get back from the museum.


I hope everyone else's Camp Nano journey is going as well as they had hoped.  I can't wait to see the final counts at the end of the month.  I hope we beat June for how many people cross that finish line!


For now, I'm off to do some editor hunting.  If you hear screams, don't worry, I have it under control.

It's Baaaack!

On this the last Sunday of the month, I feel the need to mention, however obvious it might be, that camp nano will be returning to the world in only a few short days.

I, of course, have already figured out what I'm going to write.  I actually have it plotted and ready to go.  Not because I'm amazing, just because I need to know it's ready before I even start writing.  I have to have that plot, or I start to freak out.  Trust me, I know this.  How?  Because I'm (literally) in the middle of a pantsing novel that does nothing but stress me out when I so much as think about it.

So with my mind firmly on the novel I'm about to start writing (with the occasional distraction of the novel that I'm currently editing) I thought I would make today's post a little shorter than normal and give you all an update on what's going on with me and my projects.

I've never been one to have only a single project that I focus on.  I get bored and need to move on to something different, so I currently have a few different things on the go.

Pandora a novel about a werewolf who also happens to be an assassin (I love it so far, even if I did just realize that I need to rewrite half of it) is in the middle of heavy editing.  I was supposed to be editing The Commons this month, but unfortunately feedback has been delayed, and I haven't been able to work on it.  I ended up pulling out Jayne's story, and now I actually can't wait to see how it turns out.

I've finished planning out the novel Stolen Magick, a YA about a school that teaches Arcanists (humans with the ability to wield magick) how to control their powers.  I'm very excited for this one, because I can't wait to see where the series goes.  Unfortunately, it will have to wait until November, as I won't be writing it until then.

I have 3 more novels I'll be planning for November as well.  None of them are named, but I have started brainstorming for a mid grade about a 10 year old who catches an alien stealing socks out of the dryer.  Stay tuned for more.  This one should be fun.

Three short stories have been written this month.  One has been submitted, and I'm waiting for a response.  One is going to be looked over one last time before I try to find somewhere that I want to submit it, and the last is going to be a kick off point for one of the novels for November.

The Techs, the second book in The Commons series is completely planned and ready for me to dive in August first.  (I've been eagerly awaiting writing this book, and can't wait to start.  The goal is to have it done by the 20th.)

I got some feedback from a beta reader today on The Commons and have come to the realization that I need to go over it many times more and fix many problem spots, but I can't wait to get started.  Unfortunately, it's now going to have to wait until I get through Pandora.

Okay.  I think that's all the updates I have for now (Yeah, I know, it's a lot.  I'm a little crazy...)  I'm excited for every single one of these projects, and I can't wait to see where they go.  I hope that your camp nano is amazing!

***I'm currently collecting donations for OLL (Office of Letters and Light) who hosts NaNoWriMo every year.  My goal is $500 and I've already hit 60% of that.  I need your help to complete my goal, however.  Help me raise money for the organization that single-handedly helped me to figure out jthat I'm a writer.***

Productivity. Who Knew?

Have you ever had one of those weeks where things just seem to get done, and you're never quite sure how you managed it?

That's my month so far.  I mean, I've written three short stories (all of which have made their way into my Shiny New Idea book for future series...) I've managed to make blog posts every single time that I needed to make one (even when they are late.)  I've gotten my critiques done early both weeks. (I'm already done the one that I need for Monday.  I'm never done this early!) and I've actually started editing Pandora.  I did chapter 5 for critique group, but have finished chapter 6, rewritten chapter 7 and have looked over chapter 8, which will probably be actually started tomorrow.  I've also managed to finish the planning of one of the novels I will be writing in November.

Normally I have a hard time getting motivated to do these kinds of things.  It isn't unusual to see me rushing to finish my critiques Sunday night when I realized that they weren't done yet.  Or for me to submit sub par chapters because I didn't spend nearly enough time on them.  I should probably apologize to my critique group for that, actually...

Anyway, the point of it is, I'm somehow motivated this month, though I really don't know why.  It could be because I was already planning on editing this month, but wasn't able to because my beta readers have unfortunately not gotten back to me yet.  Or it could be because I know that I'll be writing again next month, and I won't have time to get caught up on all of these things once I start doing that.

Honestly, I don't know, and I'm not sure I actually care.  I know, I know.  If I know what's keeping me motivated, I might actually figure out a way to keep myself motivated for the rest of the year.  I'm just afraid that if I figure it out, the magic might wear out.  (Don't laugh!  It's possible...) What then?  How do I go about figuring out yet another way to motivate myself?

Just to explain how weird it is, let me put this into perspective for you.  I bought two new books yesterday.  One by my favourite author Kelley Armstrong.  I've barely touched it.  I only read on the bus on the way to and from work.  Normally I would have had that book done by now.  Trust me.

Or, let's talk about the editing.  Normally it's a struggle to just get through a single chapter.  To force myself to sit down and read it over then put in the edits.  You all know this.  All you have to do is look at my very last blog post where I talked about the fact that I was back to editing.  When I finished rewriting chapter 7, all I could think about what what I  needed to do to fix chapter 8, and actually wanted to look through it right then and there.  I had to do a critique first, but I've also finished going through it.

Does that put it into perspective for you?  I don't know where it's coming from, but it makes me happy. I'm glad to be motivated.  To get all of this done and not have to worry about it so much.  I'm already freaking out too much over The Commons, so having other things to work on while waiting for the much anticipated beta reader feedback has been really helpful.

So, I've decided not to look this gift horse in the mouth.  I'm going to continue being productive for as long as I can.  I want to get as much done this month as I possibly can before heading into an extremely busy month in August.  (Last year I didn't complete the August session of camp nano, so I'm hoping to do much better this year.)

Do you ever have problems with motivation?  How do you get past it?

***I'm currently collecting donations for OLL (Office of Letters and Light) who hosts NaNoWriMo every year.  My goal is $500 and I've already hit 60% of that.  I need your help to complete my goal, however.  Help me raise money for the organization that single-handedly helped me to figure out jthat I'm a writer.***

Splashing The Plot

Nearly a year ago my group of friends and I started poker night.  It's nothing particularly amazing, we buy in with $2, and we play.  Twenty-five cents is a huge bet for us, just to put things in perspective.

Of course, as most of my friends are writers, that means that most of the people at poker night are writers.  In fact, there's only one person who isn't.  We like to think of ourselves like Castle, sitting around a poker table discussing all of the problems with our characters while tossing away money without a care.  We're not, but that's what we like to think.

Anyway, being surrounded by writers (and therefore ending up talking about writing far too often for our non-writer) sometimes we end up saying things that we didn't really mean.

For example.  A couple of months ago we were discussing plot, and someone threw in  enough coins to make everyone else fold.  This is generally called 'splashing the pot'.  What came out of my mouth, however, was 'splashing the plot'

What would have been something that most groups would make fun of for the rest of that night and moved on, we have spun into our own saying.  We no longer splash the pot...it's plot every single time.

Of course, me being me, I couldn't help but wonder what splashing the plot in an actual writing scenario.  This is what I came up with.

Have you ever come across a book where too much of the plot is given away right at the beginning of the book.  When you know what's going to happen basically from the very beginning of the book?  I, personally, hate when that happens.  I recently came across one such book.  It felt like the entire plot of the book was laid out plain as day for me.  I got annoyed, because I prefer to be surprised.   Someone once told me that I should 'stop guessing' because I was ruining it for myself.  Honestly, I don't turn around and ask myself what it could be, it really just occurs to me.  Anyway, I got supremely annoyed, and it took me a long time to be able to pick it back up to finish it.

That was the first idea I came up with.  After that I thought of all of those times in books where the plot seems to be stalling out, and I'm not quite sure that the story is actually going anywhere.  Then all of a sudden ten million things happen all at once and you can't quite seem to keep up with it.  This has happened more than once in books I've read, and not only is it confusing for the reader, it's also frustrating.  Obvious pacing issues can be absolutely infuriating.

Now, I didn't go any further than that, but from what I can see, it's never really a good thing.  Any splashing of the plot seems to annoy the readers (at least, it annoys me) and that's the last thing I want.

So, splashing the plot is going to be something that I look out for.  Pacing is something I've always been concerned about, and after thinking about this blog post, I can't help but be even more conscientious about it.



*** I am currently collecting donations for OLL (Office of Letters and Light) who hosts Nanowrimo every November, along with both Camp Nano sessions in the summer.  They are an amazing organization who deserves every penny that is donated to them.  My goal is $500, though I need all the help I can get to achieve that goal.  If you would like to help (and I hope you do) The like is on the side bar.  Thank you in advance for any donation I get.  I will be actively collecting donations until the end of October. ***

Short Stories Are Too Short

Since the end of Camp Nano, I've been concentrating on short stories, as opposed to the novels I've been focusing on for a while.  So, in the last four days, I've written two full short stories, with an idea for one more story running around in my head.

The first short story I submitted for consideration to an online magazine.  I'm hoping that it will be an addition to their third issue released in late September.

The other two stories are for Pen Duels, the part of my critique group where we use writing prompts to create stories, then critique them.  I've had the writing prompts for over a month, but I've just recently had time to actually sit down and start thinking about them.

I'm actually really excited for them.  The first one, entitled Mask is already written and submitted.  I had two amazing beta readers who gave me some really good feedback, and I'm actually really hopeful that it will be accepted.  Not certain, but hopeful.

The second The Locket I've just finished.  I'm not so excited for this one, I feel like something isn't quite right in it.  I'm going to have to fix it in editing.  It's not for submission, but I feel like I need to rework it until it's right and makes the impact I want it to make.  Of course, at the same time, I really have to make sure I'm not working it too much.  I have to take into account that the stories that make it down on paper never seem quite as shiny one they're there as they do when they're bouncing around in my head.  Of course, those same stories seem so much shinier to the people reading the stories.

The third is nothing more than an idea that's lingering in my mind.  I thought of it on Monday at critique group.  I knew that I wanted to have some kind of supernatural element to it, mostly because I've really been leaning more toward the urban fantasy / dark fantasy genres.  So a friend of mine looked up mythological creatures to me, and started reading them out.  One made me sit up and take notice.  It wasn't exactly something that I would have expected to get my attention, and yet it did.  I'm eager to start it, and at the same time worried that I won't get it right.  I'll do my best, though, it's all I can do as a writer.

So why am I telling you all of this?  Because those three stories (one of which isn't even written yet) have morphed themselves into full on novels in my head.  More than just novels, in fact.  They're quickly becoming series.

I'm not exactly short on shiny new ideas.  In fact, I already know what stories I'll be writing in November, and I picked them out of a book where I record all of the ideas that I get for stories.  I have more than enough in that book to keep me busy for years.  All I have to do is flip through the pages and wait for one of them to stand out to me, and I have my next project.

Three new ideas may not sound like a lot, but these aren't exactly half thought of vague suggestions.  These are ideas that have already been fairly formed into short stories.  I can see where each of them goes, and I think that they would be fun to write.

Of course, I already have more than enough to keep me busy in November (I've even got a back up novel just in case I need more words to write...which is definitely a possibility with me.)  These ideas that are being so insistent can't be written any time soon.

So they've been jotted down in the book and told to wait.  That I'll get to them eventually. (Honestly, it will probably be sooner rather than later).

In all of this, I think I've come to a conclusion.  I'm not a short story writer.  I can write the stories, but I always have that urge to continue them.  I can never contain them to nothing more than the 5-7 pages that I originally intended them to be.

That's alright.  I love novels, and I love thinking in terms of series.  It just means that every time I write a short story, I risk getting more shiny new ideas that will have to be written down.

Is It July Already?

During nano I always find that time moves rather strangely for me. 

First the month starts slowly.  The first and second seem to have all the time in the world as I race ahead of the game, eager to shape the chart that I want to see at the end of the month.  I'm always surprised at how slow the month is going, because if the entire month goes by that slow, then I'll never have to worry about finishing my story.

In the middle of the month, just like the rest of the nano people, I lose my momentum, and the hours drag.  I see the time there, and I just know that if I could actually write something that didn't sound like it was coming out of the mouth of a two year old, I could get so much done.  Instead I just sit there, forcing out the worst words I'm sure I've ever written, and hope for it to be over.

The end of the month goes by so quickly that I'm never quite sure what happened.  In November this resulted in me having a crisis.  I had ten days left, and one more novel to write.  Despite the fact that I had done that very thing twice in the month already, I freaked out and decided that it was too much.  I couldn't do it.  Then I type furiously and hit my goal before that final buzzer sounds (or the time flips over to midnight of the first) and I get to relax.

One the first of the month, it always hits me.  Nano is over, and I now have so many more words.  I'm always a little amazed to see that stack of papers that prove I wrote a novel (or three) in a month.

In the first Camp Nano, I barely hit the 50k mark.  Even though that was really all I was aiming for, I was a little disappointed with myself.  I know I can do so much more, and I had to write furiously to even hit that goal.  Rather than feeling like I normally do with nano, I instead felt like I could have done better, and headed into another round instantly, determined to not lose sight of my goal.

In August I did even worse.  I believe I topped out at 17k, then gave up (both on the story and on the month of Camp Nano.)  Time slipped by slowly, taunting me with my inability to finish the novel, and I eventually decided that maybe Camp Nano just wasn't for me.  Maybe I just worked better in November, and why was I even trying to write in the summer.  I never intended to join Camp this year.  I was going to spend the time editing and querying, then plan for November.

It was a friend of mine that changed my mind.  She's pregnant and going to have three little ones at home this November, so she decided to do the camps instead of Nano, because she just won't have time.  Originally I still said no, but then I changed my mind (I've never been one to turn down a challenge.)  So I launched into June determined to write 75k and finish the novel I started in April and never finished.

Much to my surprise, I felt June starting to move into the same routine November does.  With the quick beginning, struggling middle and panicky end.  I didn't write furiously for the last week, though.  Technical issues aided me in deciding that I'd written enough and I was far too busy over the last week to attempt another 50k.

However, today I can't help but sit here and think about the fact that I wrote 125k last month.  I had been afraid I wouldn't finish the 50k, and then I went and wrote another 75 on top of it.  I started a novel I hadn't even known was going to exist, and I can't wait to finish it in August.  Camp Nano took me by surprise this year.  I certainly didn't write as much as I normally do in November, but considering how much I struggled last year, my final word count impressed me.

Today is the day to stop and take a breath.  Look around and realize that we only have a month to get our lives back in order before another round of Camp Nano starts.  In only 30 days it will be time to dive into new worlds, introduce ourselves to new characters, and prove to the world, once again, that we are writers!

The Story Won't Leave Me Alone

As a writer there are different ways each of us interpret and convey our stories.  Some of us listen to our characters and tell the story that they're telling us.  Some of us line up our characters and tell them what to do.  Some of us do a mixture of the two.  None do exactly the same thing.  We each have our little process and techniques that we cling to because they've become habit.

No matter how we connect with our characters or our story, though, there is one thing that each writer has in common:  Occasionally a story or character will take over our brains.

I'm not talking about literally taking over our lives, of course (though now I'm thinking that would be an awesome idea and I may need to write that in my Shiny New Idea Book.) I mean that the character or story will become something that we can't stop thinking about.

We'll picture scenes, or just the character themselves.  Hear the dialogue running through our heads.  Find that ending that we just have to put down on paper (or in a word document, whatever.)  And it will distract us from anything else we could (or should) be working on.  It doesn't matter if we're in the middle of a novel, these projects overpower anything else until we're left wanting nothing more than to write that story.

Not too long ago I was introduced to a new webzine that a friend of mine helped to start up entitled Insomnia Press. I was reading through their website (including submissions.  I may not write a whole lot of short stories, but I thought I might as well take a look) and I came across the theme to their third issue: Death, Lies and Secrets.

I'll admit, this may seem like a rather broad theme.  When I first read it I thought 'that's it?'  I was going to just navigate away, sure I could never write anything dark enough to fit in either that theme, or the publication itself.

Apparently I was wrong.  (Okay, I hope I was.  I'm not actually done writing yet, and for all I know it could turn out horrible.  I'm going to optimistic this week.)  I had just navigated away from the page when a scene flashed through my head.

I'm not going to give away the story now (as I'm hoping to get it published and all) but it's definitely one of my darker pieces.

This story latched itself into my brain, and it's refusing to let go.  Stubbornly holding on even though I tried to inform it that I'm in the middle of Camp Nano, and I want to finish the novel I've been working on.  It's one of the most insistent stories I've ever come across (and, trust me, I've had some insistent stories.)

After a computer crash that cost me an entire day of writing (no, I didn't kill my computer, yes I wanted to) I decided that 50k words in 4 days, while actually plausible for me, isn't something I was interested in doing during June, so I finally gave in to this driving urge to write the short story.

I started it last night.  While I'm only 500 words in (I can only go up to 5000, so I'm trying to be careful with my words) so far, I think it's fantastic.

I will, of course, be looking for beta readers when I'm done to make sure that it has the impact I'm wanting it to have.  But, until then, I'm looking forward to writing the rest of it.  Even if it's only so I can think about other stories again.

The Journey Continues

Well, it's not two thirds of the way through the July session of Camp Nano 2012.  At the beginning of the month many people took up the challenge to write fifty thousand words, willing to put aside their daily lives in an effort to accomplish this feat.  Each of them was excited, nervous and determined to accomplish this seemingly impossible goal that they set out for themselves.

I, personally, love the idea of Camp Nano.  It gives us months other than November where we have the excuse to cast off the obligations of every day life and focus on our writing.  Unfortunately, as it's only the second year that OLL has offered Camp Nano, it still isn't nearly as popular as the much loved original November session of NaNoWriMo.  It's not quite the all out affair November is.

As a result, many of those determined writers have suddenly realized that they don't have enough time left in the month to finish those stories.  I believe that even now those who have fallen behind have the time to complete their novels, but another disease has spread throughout many of those brave writers.  Loss of motivation.

While I've heard that the second week is always the hardest to get through, I'm starting to feel like maybe the third week has it's own hardships.  People are finishing their novels and not feeling the need to continue on.  So those writers that aren't done lose a little bit of that support and excitement that has kept them going for this long.

Our novels are getting to the point where we've lost all hope of them being good, but we're still pushing through them, repeating to ourselves the mantra that we've developed by taking these crazy journeys through the landscapes of the worlds we've created.  'You can edit crap, you can't edit nothing.'

Now is the time when we need to band together.  For those of us that are ahead, it's up to us to encourage those that are behind.  For those that are behind, it's up to you to use that encouragement and find that lost motivation.  Because, even though writing is a solitary activity, Camp Nano brings us together as a community to push us through the hardest part of writing: getting through that first draft.

While I'm ahead for the month, I was hoping to do a lot more.  I'm only about 30k into my current novel, which means I need another 70k to finish it.  Like many others, though, I seem to have been contracted the loss of motivation.  Mine, of course, could potentially be because I finished what I thought I would at the beginning of the month.  I started a second book for the fun of it, but with no plan I appear to be stalling out.  The competition I'd managed to find at the beginning has disappeared.  Now I find myself listless.  Unwilling to continue writing knowing that I've already finished what I set out to accomplish.

I know I'm going to have to push through this feeling.  Just sit down and get writing.  I can do it.  I've done it before, and I'll probably do it again.

In the mean time, I intend to support any of my fellow campers who are behind but still want to finish.  I believe that every writer has this fifty thousand words in them, and I hope to see every one of them cross the finish line.

Until then, though, I have some writing to do of my own.  Good luck, fellow writers!  I hope to see you at the finish line.  Breathless, tired and ready to give up, but triumphant and ready to continue on the journey that Camp Nano has put us all on.

A Short Visit

So, I've been busy trying to get this novel written.  My character has been doing all sorts of things she's not supposed to be doing, and completely messing with the end of this novel...we're going to have to sit down and have a talk, her and I.

Anyway, I'm sitting here waiting for the next round of wordmongering to start, and I realized that I needed to post something today.  Of course, having not realized this before hand, I have exactly nothing by way of a topic to talk about, so I thought I would just post a short (very extremely short) update for all of you.

I have written a total of 66k words so far in the month, and should be finishing Pandora sometime tomorrow (after which I will be working on a single chapter that I owe a collaboration partner, then onto the pantsing novel, that I'm actually quite nervous about.)

While this isn't anywhere near my finishing on day five during nano in November, I'm quite pleased with how quickly I've gotten this writing done, as last year was a bit of a mess (I barely finished in July, and didn't come close to finishing in August)

I also wanted to give you all a heads up that sometimes soon I should be posting a review/author interview for a series of books that I've recently read.

Anyway, that's about all I have for you today.  I promise I'll get something better up Wednesday or Thursday.  For now, I've got to go figure out the end of this novel, since my character obviously didn't like the one I came up with.

A Pantsing Experiment

Well, here it is, a week into camp nano, and rather than feeling like I wasn't going to get through it (as I did last year) I'm actually doing really well.  A  lot of this probably has something to do with a certain wordmongering friend that has been challenging me to keep my word counts up.  But another part of this is the fact that everyone is actually doing camp nano, rather than last year when it fell a little flat.

Of course, because I was basing my success this year on how I did last year (I won the July round of camp nano, but only int he last weekend when I sprinted across the finish line by writing 25k words...) it's come to my attention that I simply don't have enough story left to finish out the month.

Sure, I suppose I could stretch it out.  Write less words each day so that I don't type out that very last sentence until the last day of camp nano, but where's the fun in that?  To know I can do it and purposely slow down just so that I'm not bored for the rest of the month?  That really isn't me, something I learned my very first nano when I hit the 50k mark halfway through and decided that I couldn't stop the journey just because I'd run out of material.

Naturally, when I realized that I was about to run into the same situation (I project that this book will be completely written no later than Friday, and that's only if I take more days off like I did today) I started to worry about what I was going to do for the rest of the month.

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I think of Nano as a journey.  It's not just about getting the words on the page.  It's a self challenge.  The only person who's going to end up disappointed in the end if you don't finish, is yourself.  Of course, where you consider 'finished' is another story entirely.  Going out to the write ins and meeting other authors who are struggling with the same issues as you is another part of this journey.  As is all the ups and downs your characters give you.

To this day I have never heard a person say 'My nano novel went exactly the way I planned' because no matter how much time you put into plotting something is always going to come up in the middle of a word war that throws you for a loop and has you furiously trying to figure out where that little twist is going to fit into the rest of the story.

Even if my word count is done early, stopping when it's over, to me, is a little like ordering the wrong meal at a restaurant.  It's food, and it's good.  It will satisfy the hunger that brought you to that restaurant, but at the end of the meal, there's always something missing.  That little extra something that you know you would have gotten if you'd just ordered that other meal you had been contemplating.

Nano runs for a month, and I think the experience should be a month long.

So this month, I've decided to do a little experiment.  I'm going to try pantsing a novel.  That's right, you heard me (or read me?).  The queen of planning is going to grab a story by the horns and give it a whirl.  I even have the idea picked out (one that I've looked at before and dismissed as not catching my attention suddenly jumped off the page today and shouted out an idea that makes it so much more interesting than it was before).

Wish me luck!  As soon as I finish Pandora a new novel will be written, and I don't know what's going to happen.  As a good friend told me, it's time to jump off the cliff with my eyes closed.  No seeing where I'm going, no aiming for the soft bushes.  It's time I landed in the wild roses and got skewered by thousands of tiny thorns.

Off To Camp We Go

First I would like to apologize.  I didn't manage to get a single blog post up last week.  I'm supposed to do two a week and failed utterly.  I'm going to blame it on my lack of computer the week before and therefore the overwhelming need to get caught up on my planning goals.  I needed to have a plot done by end of day Thursday, and I just barely managed it (finishing it at 11:52)

Anyway, onto the real point of this post.  Camp Nano.

In November every year (since I started in 2010) I do something called NaNoWriMo.  For any of you that don't know, nano was started by a non-profit organization by the name of OLL (Office of Letters and Light).  Their main goal is to encourage amateur writers to get those books done.  The entire idea behind it (and I'm paraphrasing here) is: You can edit crap, you can't edit nothing.  Yes, I use that phrase all the time, no I didn't actually hear it from the website.

Basically it just means, you need to get that first draft written no matter what.  Don't make excuses, don't put it off, get it done.  Because until you have that rough draft in your hand, you're never going to become the writer you want to be.  It's basically the first step.

Nano has done great things for me.  In 2010 I started off thinking there was no way I was going to reach the goal (which, in case you were wondering, is 50k words in a month) and ended up with three times the amount I needed.  It was crazy.  I discovered so much about myself that month.  That I'm actually quite competitive (I spent the entire month staring at a chart swearing that I was going to surpass that first place person).  That there are, in fact, other people out there like me (before that point it had been a while since I had met anyone who truly understood me).  And, of course, the most important thing of all, that I am a writer.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Well, last year OLL came out with another program (NaNoWriMo isn't the only program they have.  Next year I'm going to try Script Frenzy with some friends as well.  I'm pretty excited.)

They called it Camp NaNoWriMo.  Basically it's just Nano, but in the summer.  You have the same goal as in November, 50k words in a month, but the format is slightly different.  First, all of the pep talks that arrive in your mailbox is camp themed, as is the site itself.  Second, rather than forums and grouping us into our districts, we're assigned cabin mates.  Five other people who are going through the exact same things as you, just trying to survive the month.

Last year, unfortunately, we weren't given a whole lot of notice.  It was about a week before July first that they said 'Hey, by the way, we'll be doing camp this year.'  and nanoers, as a collective, kind of gaped at them like they were trying to tell a joke that simply wasn't funny.

They weren't joking, however, and I was talked into the endeavour by a fellow nanoer.

July I managed to hit my goal (just barely.  I wrote about 25k of it in the last weekend.  It was crazy).  August, I didn't even come close, barely scratching 17k before giving up.  Even the novel I was working on ended up getting scrapped with a barely there plot (they pulled a Lord of the Rings and walked a lot) and characters whose motivations were murky (not to mention the twins who kept switching ages on me...)  With that short of notice, the MLs didn't even have time to consider setting up additional write ins.

It was a tough two months.  On one hand I was glad that OLL decided to set up nano in other months as well (really, once a year just isn't enough) on the other with how badly I did, I almost felt like I shouldn't have even bothered.

This year, of course, we had much more notice (not to mention the fact that the two sessions of Camp are a month apart, running June and August this year).  I wasn't originally planning on doing either session, but a friend of mine won't be able to join us in August, and I wanted to nano with her.  So I wrote up a plot (okay, I started the novel in April and didn't have time to finish it, so that's what I'm working on.)

The title of this book is Pandora.  It's about a female assassin who happens to be a werewolf.  I've never written a character like her before, and I'm finding her to be so much fun.  I love the things she says, and the replies she gets from the people in her life.

So far, at three days in, I'm sitting at 27337 words (54774 words for the novel, as I had already started it) and I'm not even close to regretting the decision to participate.  And doing this session certainly doesn't mean that I'm not going to do the other ones.  By the end of 2012 I fully intend to have one novel out to agents, and five novels written.

I only hope that I'll actually get to sleep in December.

Happy camping to all my fellow nanoers!  I hope your muse smiles on you fondly this month.  May your word counts soar, and your plot remain strong.  Good luck!

Pen Duels

In August of last year a group of friends and I established a critique group.  (We named it A Bitch of Writers) It's one of the greatest things that I've ever done.  We meet on a bi-weekly basis (our submissions are due one monday, we meet the next) and we each critique two other people's work.

In under a year critique group has managed to help me start putting description into my first drafts (my first book ever had absolutely no description.  I didn't even remember what my characters looked like.  I was getting better before joining the group, but now I'm leagues ahead of where I was this time last year.)  It's helped me to recognize when my plot starts to go awry, and I've found myself paying more attention to my wording choice as I'm writing.

Just recently, though, our critique group decided to add a new element to what we do.  For a while we worried about become a writing group, which wasn't our intention at all.  We're already part of a writing group, and while we love writing together, we didn't need to spend time writing in each other's company.  We got together for the purpose of improving our writing.

So, we came up with an alternative.  It's called Pen Duels.  (Yes, we do have to name everything we do.  We're writers, what do you expect?)  Basically, every month and a half to two months we get together and share a story that we've written using a writing prompt.

These prompts, which I send out the Monday after each Pen Duel meet up, whether we have a date for the next one or not, are just little things that each of us has to find a way to work around.  For example, the last Pen Duels featured stories about two existing characters from different books meet up.  We had all kinds of things!  One actually took place inside a video game!

Of course, it was a bit of a coincidence that we all ended up using the same writing prompt.  I send out two (I don't want anyone to feel forced to write something they absolutely hate, so I try to make it a choice.  Whichever one speaks to them is the one they work on.  It seems to have gone over well so far.)

So far I've found it kind of awesome to see how each person interprets the prompt in their own way.  Which is honestly my favourite thing about writing.  How two people can have identical ideas, but have the story end up completely different.

Anyway, we've set it up so, rather than sending in a submission and having everyone go over it and prepare critiques, we instead read it out loud and have a bit of a discussion afterward.  This, of course, took some developing.  Our first one we kind of sat around after the story was over, nodded and said it was good.  Since then we've decided to stick to our critiquing format (we critique seven areas: Plot, Characters, Voice & POV, Dialogue, Description, Scene Structure and Overall), while still holding it as a discussion.

Doing it this way means that we're not only putting our writing skills to work, but we're also keeping it all about critiquing, so there's no fear that we turn into a writing group.

A Bitch of Writers and Pen Duels have improved my writing ten fold.  While they also take up quite a bit of time, I would never regret joining them (or helping to set them up.)  I can't wait to see how my Camp Nano book turns out after months of critique group.

If there's one thing I would recommend to any writer to improve your writing, while studying the craft can help, I would say join a critique group.  There is nothing as valuable as getting direct feedback from other writers.  If you can't find one, take that leap and set it up!  If you make one, others will join.  I can only hope that yours is as successful as ours is.

So Little Time

My goal, as can be seen by looking at my progress before section, is to have The Commons to a completed second draft so that I can send out to my beta readers by the fifteenth.  That's a whole nine days away, and guess how far I am from finishing it?

If you guessed not anywhere near close, you were right!  I'm stuck around chapter 22 (in which I have to rewrite the first scene) of 35.  In the last two days I've barely gotten anything done.  It's a sad fact for me to admit, as I was actually planning on doing at least two chapters a day.  Of course, I was hoping to be done a bit early so I could take one more look over it and see if I missed anything, but that's definitely not going to happen now.

Nine days and thirteen chapters.  Which means I no longer have time to procrastinate.  I can't let myself get distracted by all the shows I want to watch.  I don't have the time to waste, anymore.  If I do get distracted, I'll end up missing my deadline.  And that's not something I'm willing to let happen.  If I don't get my manuscript out to my betas on time, then they wont get it back to me on time.  If I don't get it back in time, then I can't use the feedback to go through it one last time and start sending out queries.

It's the domino effect, writer style.

Now, I suppose you're asking: 'What does it matter if you get your queries out on time?'.  That's a very good question to ask.  The answer is, I was really hoping to do both Camp Nano sessions being held this year.  I also need to plan out the novels I'll be writing during nanowrimo.  If my editing isn't done, and if the queries aren't sent out, then I have to sacrifice one of those things.

In June I'll be taking part in the first session of Camp Nano, where I'll be writing Pandora, I book that I was supposed to write about a month ago.  Procrastination got the better of me then too, and I only managed 25,000 words in the time I should have been able to write 100,000 words.  I've been trying to figure out a way to get motivated when it's no nano...but that's another post.


The point of the matter is, I've already put off writing this novel once.  I can't do that to the characters again.  They've been awfully patient while I've been editing.  Mostly because I promised them that I would be finishing their story in June.  I'm afraid of what would happen if I tried to put it off again.  There might be a riot.

In August, I'm hoping to write The Techs which is the second book in The Commons series.  I've just barely begun to plan it, but I already have a bit of the story line going on, so I'm getting excited.  Of course, I don't want to write the novel until I'm completely done editing the first one.  I'm a little too wary of the changes that I could make which would mean far more work in editing the second one.  I've done that once, and I'll never do it again.

In August I'll need to write about 100,000 words.  I'll have even less time to work on the novel which should, by then, be completed. 

After that comes the planning for the three novels I'm going to be writing during nanowrimo.  Yes, three.  I'm a little crazy like that.  I'll only have two months instead of the planned three.

All of this means that I only have so much time to get my editing done.  I only have so much time to get my queries out.  And I don't have time to be acting like I have all the time in the world.

Nine days to finish thirteen chapters.  It's going to be tight, but I think I can do it.  What's my motivation?  In November I'll be taking a trip down to San Francisco to go the The Night Of Writing Dangerously.  And when I'm down there introducing myself to people, I don't want to tell them that I'm still working on the novel that I'm going to be sending out real soon.  I want to tell them that I have queries out and waiting for responses.  Or maybe, just maybe, that I found an agent

Teaming Up

My multiple projects have been the subject of a couple of my posts now, and it seems that this one is going to be no different.  Probably because I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed by how much work I've managed to create for myself.  The fact that I actually want to add more projects to that list is really not the point.  The point is that despite how much I have on the go, I have yet to get anything completed.

I'm not the only one with this problem.  A friend of mine on twitter recently commented on a post a made.  It was a random one about having to finish my critiques before going away for the weekend.  She asked if I could look over some of her work, and I happily agreed (because I'm not nearly busy enough, I need to add a couple of more things to my schedule).  She told me that she wasn't close enough to being finished right at that moment, but she would be eventually.

The conversation went on in that direction for a while until she said something about another twitter friend telling her she needed to actually finish a project.  Pick one thing and actually focus on it.  It was so close to my own situation where I just keep project hopping, and never really settling in to get one done, that I couldn't help but tell her I had the same problem.

Of course, us being the writers we are, this realization that we had the same problem when it came to our writing quickly escalated into us have Wonder Twin-Multitaskers Powers.  Don't ask, it was late.

Anyway, while this may seem like nothing more than a random conversation, it was a lot more than that because of what came out of it: accountability.

I don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to being accountable to myself.  I tend to let myself off the hook more often than not, and that leads to things like entire weekends being spent getting caught up on TV shows as opposed to writing the book I was already 40,000 words behind on (no...that book is still not finished.  I no longer have and ETA on that, but I'm hoping eventually, as I have some serious plans for that series.)

Anyway, the point is, it was obviously not working.  Finishing a project isn't the same as doing something like nano.  There I have a chart I have to update daily, I have a word count goal that pretty much everyone in the city whose doing nano knows about.  I have other people working toward that same goal (Yeah, okay, maybe not exactly the same...theirs might be just a bit lower than mine...) that I can compete with to keep myself going.  Right now, though?  Right now I have nothing to keep that motivation.  And if I'm slacking on keeping myself accountable, nothing is ever going to get done.

That's where Moni comes in.  Since she's been having the same problems as me, we've decided to team up.  Create a system where we will be accountable to each other, and with any luck that will be what we need to get our projects moving forward again.

Of course, we haven't started yet.  With travelling over the weekend and critique group, not to mention the fact that we're in different time zones, we've decided to try and get started on Tuesday.  I'm hopeful that this will work.  There's nothing more encouraging than knowing there's another writer out there working on their projects at the same time as you and struggling just as much with the same issues.

Come Tuesday we'll see if we can actually get our projects done.  (I will be working on The Commons and getting it ready to be sent out, even though Pandora isn't done being written yet.  I would love to spend all of my time in Jayne's world, but it's really not fair to characters and plots I've already started.  Only once The Commons is out to beta readers will I allow myself to be pulled back into Pandora. Sorry Jayne.)

I will, however, be doing Camp Nano in June this year.  I don't know yet if I will just be writing the end of Pandora or if I will be writing something new.  I need to see how quickly I can get through my editing.  Either way, though, I'm glad that I found another writer than can hopefully help me through the multitasking cycle of starting a new project without finishing the last.