Becoming More Productive

During NaNoWriMo this year, I wasn’t quite as productive as I was last year. Rather than 300k words, I only ended up writing about 286k words. Which doesn’t seem like a whole lot less (and in fact produced an entire extra book) but it’s enough for me to feel like I let myself become less prolific.

Now, I know this isn’t actually true. I have four novels sitting and waiting for my attention. Most of which I’ll probably need to add words to, but I’m alright with that. I just have to figure out where I can add a little bit of action.

Anyway, because I felt less productive during NaNo, now I feel like I need to be more productive when it comes to my editing.

As any of you that regularly read this blog will probably already know, I consider myself to be a slow editor. I’m not saying it takes me years and years to get anything edited, and I probably only think that because I can get through a first draft so quickly, why doesn’t the rest of it go as quickly?

Despite knowing all of that, though, I can’t help but feel like I can go at least a little bit faster. So I’m going to be working at trying to make that happen. There’s going to be a few steps involved:

1. Actually stick to my goals. One of the big problems I have with productivity (and I know I’ve said this before) is that I seem to have a hard time keeping on track with the goals I lay out for myself. So the first step to being more productive is to lay out goals and actually stick to them.
2. Learn how to edit. I’m not saying that I’ve been doing it wrong since I started, but I’ve never really looked in to how other people edit, so I’m looking at getting some books and reading up on the subject. Hopefully I’ll learn some tips and tricks to getting through the process quicker.
3. Don’t give up! In the past when the editing seems to become really bogged down, and I feel like there’s just too much work to do to make it worth it, I give up on the novel. I’m going to try not to do that anymore. While this may not help, necessarily, with the speed of my editing, it will help with how many viable novels I have.

There you have it. My three step process. I’m also going to be changing up what I’m working on. Try to have different projects in different stages. One editing (Okay, I have two: Pandora and Birth), one planning (Malice) and one writing (I don’t have one of these yet, but I do plan to have something ready to start writing for February). That way I can move on to other projects and not spend all of my time obsessed with one.

Hopefully this will help. If not, at least I know I tried something. And it’s not like I’m ever going to give up writing. This is what I want to do with my life, now I just have to actually see it through.

Do you feel like you need to be more productive with your writing? What do you do to keep yourself on track?

The Amazing Disappearing Chapter

At the beginning of the month I set out some goals for myself for my editing and planning.  The planning I'm ahead on.  I've completed one novel (the planning stages) that wasn't supposed to be done until the end of the month and started another one that shouldn't have been started until October, so I'm pretty happy with that.

The editing, though, hasn't been going so well.  I was doing fine until I came to a chapter that I had to rewrite.  I knew what I wanted there, but every time I sat down to write it I felt like it was going absolutely no where.

What did I do?  I procrastinated.  I assumed that eventually I would figure it out and get it done, and I continued on blissfully unaware of just how much time was slipping away while I allowed this chapter to just sit there and taunt me.

The other night, though, I decided that was enough of that and sat down seriously to finish writing it.

I wrote about 120 words in a half an hour.  120 words.  That's about what I write in 2 minutes, not half and hour.

At the end of that, I decided that it was time to figure out why it just wasn't working.

I looked at the chapter before it, which ended with my main character frustrated and feeling the need to just get out of the house.  Then I looked at the chapter after, which had my main character trying to work out that frustration with the use of a punching bag.  Then I looked back at the chapter I was trying to rewrite where my main character did something that had to be done eventually, but ultimately put there changed the pacing and tone of the novel too much.

So, I did the only thing I could do.  I took out the chapter.

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't an easy decision for me.  I didn't want to lose the words.  I know how long I want this novel to be by the end of this process, and right now it's about 3k below that goal, and that's all thanks to this chapter.

It was frustrating to watch it go, because I've been trying to make the thing work for so damn long, but I knew I had to let it go for the good of the book.

Sometimes chapters or scenes that we originally write just don't end up working, especially after revisions and changes.  It's hard to hit that delete button, because that's work that we did.  We wrote those words, and now we're watching them disappear knowing that we're not planning on replacing them.  But we can't just leave them there.  If we do, it makes the book less than it could be, and ultimately that's what we want more than anything in the world.

So with a heavy heart I will say good bye to that chapter, and continue editing the rest of the book (which needs to be done in 7 days!  Eep!).  At least now I can move past that chapter and actually make some progress on it.

Being Productive

Normally I procrastinate so much that I don't get much done.  Especially when I'm editing.  I find it so hard to make myself actually want to start fixing and changing my story.  You all know exactly how much I love editing, of course, and I am very good at making sure I do everything but the editing that I'm supposed to be doing.

In a conversation with a friend this week (one B. A. Matthews) I started expressing my frustration with the fact that I'm really not getting anywhere with my stories.  That was when I realized something.  I can't be frustrated with not going anywhere, because the reason I'm not is because of all the procrastinating I've been doing.  It's not my manuscript's fault that I'm looking everywhere but at it.  It's not my characters' fault when they're constantly shouting at me about what they want to happen in the next book, or the one after that.  I can't write those stories, though, not when I'm not even done the first book.

No, there's only one person at fault in this whole scenario, and it's me.

I've been getting frustrated with myself.  I claim to want to write for a living.  To want to be a published author who is taken seriously and has a following, but how can I do that when I'm playing useless games on facebook instead of editing or writing?  How can I say that I want fans, when I can't guarantee that I'll be able to focus enough on the story in front of me to get it past the first draft?

So I'm making a new promise tonight.  I've done this before, I know.  I've committed myself to my writing more times than I can really count, but I'm still going to do it again, and I'm hoping to actually stick with it.

My first promise:  I am going to stop complaining about editing.  Especially on my blog.  I'm sure you're all as tired to hear it as I am to type it out.  Because, let's face it, complaining about editing is really just another way to avoid doing it.  And that's just a vicious cycle that I'll never be rid of if I let myself continue down that road.

My second promise: Get my manuscript out to beta readers by May 15th.  I currently have 2 beta readers anxiously awaiting (at least in my head) the arrival of my manuscript.  Having an actual due date, rather than an arbitrary goal, I'm hoping that I can actually do it.  I'm also still looking for a third beta reader.  If anyone's interested, please let me know.

My third promise: I'm going to go out of my way to try and find someway to like editing.  It may never work, but I'm certainly going to try.  I don't want to spend my entire life hating this part of writing, so I just have to look for that part of it that I like and latch onto it.

I'm hoping that I can keep these promises for longer than I've kept most of my previous ones (for the record, I have stuck with getting my blog posts up, but none of my editing/writing promises have been stuck to.)

Now it's time for me to start putting these promises into action.

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.

My Half Eaten Sandwiches

Ever since I was introduced to the idea of unfinished novels being like half eaten sandwiches, I honestly haven't been able to get the image out of my mind.  Someone wandering around with a sandwich in their hand munching away happily.  Suddenly a new sandwich appears, and they find themselves questioning whether they like the sandwich they're currently eating at all.  It doesn't take too much to convince them to put down that half eaten sandwich, pick up the new one and continue on their way, only to discover a new sandwich.

That is the very definition of me as a writer.  I have a long trail of half eaten sandwiches.  All of them ditched for something that seemed shinier or more interesting.  All of them, I'm sure, having some kind of potential that I just couldn't see.

I can already feel this very thing happening with one of the novels that I'm currently working on.  The Commons is a YA dystopian I wrote during nano.  I loved this book while I was planning it, I loved it while I was writing it, and I loved it after the first draft was done.

So what's the problem?  The same problem that I have every single time I finish a first draft.  I can't seem to get through the editing.

I know you've all heard me bitching about editing before, and I'm sure you'll hear it again (as it is my least favourite part of the writing process) but it is unfortunately what is currently holding me back as a writer.  It's what's keeping me from getting a novel to a draft where I can feasibly send it out to agents/publishers and try to take that step forward into actually becoming an author.

Ironically, I used to think that I could never finish a novel.  As in, writing the first draft.  I spent years beginning stories only to pretend that never happened.  Denying all the while that I did, in fact, have a story in me that I wanted to tell.  It took nano to make me realize that this was something I could, in fact, do.  That writing a novel wasn't just for those favourite authors whose stories I fell in love with.  I could do it too.

Out there somewhere I'm sure there's something that could motivate me just as much for editing, but so far I have yet to find it.  And without motivation, I've found the process of editing tedious and frustrating (just as I'm sure most writers do.  I believe it has something to do with writing being a creative process and editing being analytical.)

What I have to do is just sit down and force myself to do it.  To get the editing over with so that I can hold a completed manuscript in my hand.  To finally look at something I've written and think 'that's it!  I'm done!  It's ready to be seen.'

Which means that all of those sandwiches that keep appearing, shiny and new and looking oh so tasty, are going to have to be put on the back burner.  No matter how exciting they seem, or how much I want to write them, I need to finish, actually completely finish, a novel.  Time to finish one of these sandwiches!

Anniversary of a Monger

As many of you know (and as I often preach) if you're looking for a writing community, you don't have to look any further than twitter.  If you know the right hashtags, you can find the greatest people willing to push you forward and not let you give up on whatever novel you're currently working on.  I find almost nothing as helpful as this community when I'm trying to get through my work.  Especially editing.  While I may not get it all done, I get far more done thanks to the support of those people.

Wordmongering is the first of these hashtags that I ever used.  Unlike the generic writing hashtag, this group has a specific goal.  You write from the top of the hour to the half hour then compare word counts.

Some of you may wonder what's so fantastic about that.  As someone who thrives on competition, I can tell you, it's amazing.  Through wordmongering I have managed to get my average words up to about 2000 in every half hour (during november I was actually beating that number, but I'm far more motivated during november than any other month of the year)

I've met amazing people there.  People who have offered to beta read for me, though that book was sadly shelved.  I've met people who have forced me to type faster and faster in the hopes of catching up to them.  (My nickname may be robot, but there are still others out there who can get more words crammed into that half hour span than me.)

This hashtag (along with its counter editmongering, which I really should be paying more attention to right now as I'm in the middle of editing a novel) was born just over a year ago.  It was started by one Moni-Marie Vincent.  Of all of the people in the hashtag, she's the most supportive.  More often than not you can see her in there writing furiously, (or editing, of course).  Even if she's not working on anything, she's in there cheering on everyone else.

Wordmongering is what kept me writing after my first nano.  It was a home I found that made sure I was writing everyday.  It kept me from giving up on the dream I've developed where I get published.  If there was one hashtag that I would want every writer who might have issues with motivation, or concentration, to have, it would be Wordmongering.

Editmongering, on the other hand, is held between the half hour mark and the hour mark.  Officially, anyway.  I've found that more often than not people just hang out there while they're editing.  It's a lot harder to log how much editing you've done, so this way you can still hang out with some fantastic writers while doing what you have to in order to get your novel in shape.

I should warn you, editmongering tends to have more people complaining, but I'm of the firm belief that editing requires complaining.  No one can cheerfully tear their own writing apart then put it back together, can they?  Well, I can't, anyway.  So maybe it's just me.

Anyway, while I don't have any amazing stories for editmonging, I'm actually pretty sure that has a lot to do with the fact that I don't use this hashtag nearly as much as I should.  Because I am really good at procrastinating on editing.  In fact, if I have any excuse to not edit, I will definitely use it.

I wanted to say happy anniversary to Wordmongering and Editmongering.  I can't tell you how much you have helped me to accomplish.  Thank you for everything you've done!