Writing Together

In my last post I told you all about wordmongering, a fantastic hashtag that created a writing community on twitter.  And that's what I want to talk about today again.  A writing community.

Most people think that writing is a solitary activity.  For the most part, they're right.  The actual act of sitting down and writing is something you have to do alone.  You can be in a group of people, which I actually find quite helpful, but the writing itself is a solitary thing.

I find, though, that at times the writing can be more of a group activity than most people would think.  Without the writing community (more like a friend, but one that I wouldn't have met without a writing community) Monday would have been a very frustrating night for me.

I am currently in the middle of planning a novel that I'm hoping to have finished the first draft of by the end of the month.  The book has one of the largest casts I've worked with, and one of the characters decided that Monday was the night he was finally going to start talking to me.  Unfortunately it was like he didn't realize just how loud it is in my head.  You may have noticed that I'm working on a few projects.  The characters from all of those books are always trying to get my attention.

Well, he managed to get my attention with a single stray thought.  That single thought managed to get me thinking about the different possibilities that could happen with this character.  Was he going to betray the main character?  Because that was the stray thought that managed to grab my attention.

Except that betraying her wasn't really in his character.  He may be an assassin, but I really didn't see him killing the girl that he trained as, basically, his replacement.  No matter how much I thought about it, though, whatever he was trying to tell me just wasn't getting through.  It was like we were on a call and all I could hear was static with a few words breaking through.  Then it suddenly felt like I lost the call altogether.

So I decided that I had to get some perspective.  That's where a good writing community really starts to come in handy.  With the help of some of my friends, who are also writers, I managed to figure out that the thought he was giving me wasn't at all what I originally thought it was.  I'm not going to post the solution I came up with, because I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.  After all, this book is going to end up getting published, and you're all going to buy and read it, right?

Through talking it out I managed to figure out a whole subplot, a twist, that I had no idea was there.  If they hadn't been there, I'm pretty sure I would have never figured it out.  Something would have always felt wrong, and most likely, my character would have stopped talking to me altogether.  Which is not something that I like to have happen.

Do you have a writing community that can help you work through the problems in your stories?  Or do you go it alone, a true lone wolf?

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!

Why Do I Do This To Myself?

Ever since I started doing nano, I have discovered that I suddenly have a life.  Where I was once a hermit who stayed in my room pretty much 95% of of the time, I now find myself going out more days than staying in.  Seeing my friends, going to movies, I even am part of a poker night.  (Don't get worried, it's a $2 buy in.  Any more than that and I would probably be backing away from the table, shaking my head.).  I'm also part of a critique group, which has been awesome in helping me to see my work in a new light.

Normally the way our critique group works is that we each send in a chapter (or two) of our current novel, and two people critique it.  (There are six people in our group, but we've broken up into two groups of three, because critiquing five selections would just take far too much time.)  We get together every two weeks to deliver the critiques to each other, and (at least I find) they help us to fix that chapter, or edit the next chapter.  Hell, it even helps us to fix our work as we're writing it.  Since I've started critique group, even my first drafts are getting better.  I'm more aware of my word choice, and description (though I still have a long way to go with that last one)

This month, though, we decided to try something a little different.  I'm not entirely sure if we'll ever do it again, as this is just an experiment (and I don't know about everyone else, but there's just so much to do this week!)

Anyway, on Monday we're going to have our first ever 'writing night'.  Unlike our nano meets, where we just get together and work on our own individual manuscripts, for this writing night an assignment (or two) were sent out.  Each assignment had their own set of rules that we had to follow, including no beta readers, and they had to be done for Monday, when we're going to read them aloud to the group.  Of course critiques will come in when the rest of the group weighs in on on what we've been working on all week.

My first confession: I'm the one who created the assignments, and set the rules.

On Sunday night I was frantically looking through pictures trying to find pictures, and reading through books to find writing prompts.  Despite what you may think, I definitely didn't have an advantage on everyone else.  I didn't look for the pictures or prompts ahead of time, as it was all done the night before I had to send it out.  But I did get it out.

My second confession:  I apparently don't want to follow the rules.

Which is terrible, because I wrote the bloody rules.  Literally.  I keep wanting to get one of my coworkers to read it for me.  Then I have to remind myself that I can't.  I even managed to write my first story about 200 words over the limit, meaning I now have to go back and somehow edit 200 words out of the bloody thing.  Something that I am dreading doing, because I always hate cutting words out of my stories.  I wrote it that way for a reason, and now I have to figure out which parts aren't actually necessary.  While I'm doing it, I have to actually think about what my critique group would say.

Needless to say, I'm nervous.  At one point in my life, I actually thought that I would never be able to write a novel.  I proved myself wrong on that one.  I've now written nine novels, with another one in the brainstorming stage, and two more collaborations I'm trying to work through.  Now, though, I find it hard to put my entire thought process into a three thousand words.  I can't even write a stand alone novel, for crying out loud.  I think in series!  Not short stories.

As this was my idea, however, I can't let myself not put my all into it.  I got through the first draft of this story, and I actually think that this story was pretty good.  I may change my mind when I go back and edit, but for now, I actually like this story.  And I firmly believe that my critique group is the reason this story is so good.

Now I just need to get one more story done before Monday.  Hopefully this one wont go over the word limit!

A Sad Oversight

It was brought to my attention the other day that I have allowed a terrible lapse to occur.  I am going to attempt to rectify this horrible mistake.

A few months ago (well...it might have been more than a few months ago...probably since about August?) I had the house to myself for a few days, and I was telling my friends about it.  One such friend (You all know her as B.A. Matthews) suggested that they come over for a party.  I couldn't because I had to work the next day, and told them about how I would be kicking them out after only a couple of hours.


Though we discussed still getting together to do some writing, in the end we decided to instead have our party on twitter.  It was going to be a friday night, so originally we were just going to hash tag it Friday Night Party.

When it came down to it though, the hash tag ended up being #FNTWP.  Friday Night Twitter Writing Party.  And it was awesome.  It also attracted far more people than I had thought it would.

After a night full of great conversation with other writers, insight into what others were doing, and even my own work, and actually getting some writing done, one of the final comments was 'see you next Friday.'

Of course, we had never planned for this hashtag to end up being something we did every single week.  We were just going for one good night to get together while still being able to do all of the stuff we needed to do at home.  We did, though.  We started putting it on every single week.  Even during nano, those five hours every Friday night served as a time when we could talk to fellow writers.  Relieve the stress of whatever was going on with our lives.  Work on whatever we were working on at that moment.

It was fantastic.

To this day we still run #FNTWP on  Friday nights.  We aren't always both there.  Sometimes I work late, so I don't get on until about nine, but someone is usually there.  If not, if you hang out long enough, eventually someone will get on.

I would encourage any writer to join in the conversation.  We have a great time, and I never go away without feeling like I got something out of it, even on the nights when I don't actually get anything done.  I love it, and I feel like everyone should get a chance to experience it.

Anyway, if you can't tell, I love #FNTWP.  If you want to see what it's all about, drop by any Friday night between seven pm and midnight (mountain time).  We'd love to see you!

And The Race Is On...

It's the first day of NaNoWriMo, so naturally I'm doing a blog post.  This post comes courtesy of BA Matthews, who so very kindly challenged me to write a blog post everyday this month.  Everyday.  While I'm trying to hit my 200k goal.  Yep.  You're right, I probably am crazy.  The problem is, I find it so very hard to not accept those writing challenges.  So here we go.

Day 1:

I am currently sitting at 7981/200,000 words.  This means I've hit my target for the day, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to stop.  (I'm not sure I know what the meaning of the word 'stop' actually is)  Instead I'm going to continue utilizing the amazing wordmongering hashtag on twitter and get the word count up to at least 10k.

For those of you that are looking at this, shaking your head and thinking 'I could never do that', let me tell you something.  Every writer is different.  Not just in what genre they write, or their particular brand of word choice, or even in how they choose to break up their novel.  Every writer also writes at different speeds.

To get to my speed, I actually turn off every other mental process (aside from those keeping me alive, of course) and just let the words flow.  Although I hit the backspace button more than I probably should (damn typos...I just can't leave them alone!) I don't rethink any sentence...unless I don't know where I was trying to go with it.  Then I might start it over again.

Some people, of course, can't quite get their inner editor to shut up.  I know people who will agonize over every word in a sentence, and end with much lower word counts than mine.  Does that mean that I'm the better writer?  Definitely not!  More than likely it's my work that's going to need to undergo heavy surgery when all is said and done just to make it passable, and their novel that is much more presentable, even as a first draft.

Sometimes I almost wish I was like those people, because then, maybe, I wouldn't have to spend so long editing.  I hate editing with a passion, and anything I can do to avoid it is good for me.  But I don't write like that.

In the end, just like singers, writers have to be true to themselves too.  Yes, we can adapt and change our writing styles, taking into account other writing styles that we may have seen, or learned about, but in the end, we can't be anyone other than who we are.  If that means we write slower because we hate putting a terrible sentence on the page than so be it!  If that means that we can't even hear the music blaring in our ears because we're so shut down while we're writing, so be it!

Be you, and your story will turn out exactly the way you want it.  Good luck!  I can't wait to see the wrimos start to cross that finish line!  Nano the 13th is going to be Epic!