The Plans of a Planner

As I'm certain you are all aware by now, I have a million things I want to do this year.  And every day seems to bring with it something else that I'm desperately wanting to try.  I have writing conferences, and editing.  Rewriting and drafting.  Critiquing and writing exercises.  All of which take time.  Time, that I've come to realize, that I just don't have.

I've always had the issue where I realize that I can do something, and I decide that I'm going to do even more.  (This is called being competitive with oneself.  It's not the healthiest thing in the world to do.  And yet, I find it hard to stop...) Then I end up setting ridiculous goals for myself that there's not way I'm ever going to finish, and get frustrated when instead of succeeding, I get overwhelmed and end up getting less done than I would have if I hadn't over planned everything and tried to make myself do more than is humanly possible.  (Don't be fooled by the nickname, folks.  Much as my writing group likes to call me a robot, I really am still human.  I swear it.)

So, this year, when I set up all of my goals, certain that I needed to do all of it while still working forty hours a week at my day job, I was blissfully unaware that I was falling into the same cycle that I always find myself in.  I'll tell you one thing: Ignorance is not bliss.  And whoever said it was should be shot.

I made it through January alright.  February, I stumbled.  A lot.   This had something to do with some feedback I got on a project that I had labelled nearly finished, and had to look at under the microscope again.  So, instead of writing the first draft of the second book, I rewrote half of the first book and scraped pretty much the entire plot that I already had worked out for the second one.

In March I seemed to find my feet again, though I also began to realize that I hadn't made any allowances for unexpected things coming along, and started to sort through what I had planned for the year.  First to go were the writing exercises.  I wanted to do all 201 this year, but I hit a road block at about 17, was never really able to recover, and soon found myself so far behind that the thought of them just stressed me out.  For the good of my health (and the projects that trying to catch up on those exercised would have taken time away from) I decided that it wasn't worth it to continue.  I will get back to them eventually.  They were a lot of fun, and I was learning from them, but right now it's just not feasible.

I did manage to get the planning done on a novel I wanted to completely rewrite.  I decided I was going to do Dangerous Waters in April, but because I finished the planning early in March, I started writing then too.  I even made it to 25k before Camp Nano officially started!

Which, of course, is when my motivation decided that it wanted to rest for a while and I found myself completely engrossed in a tv series, and unable to pull myself away from the story line to work on, well, anything.

Now I've managed to catch up on my camp nano goal (though I'm still only planning on 50k, and I'll need another 75k afterward to finish this project) as well as fairly up to date on the script project myself and a couple of friends have going on.

While I know what months I'm going to be writing during (Junowrimo, Camp Nano - July editing, and Nano, of course) the rest of the months are up in the air.  And I think I prefer it that way.  Even if I am a planner.

Of course, I might be less worried about getting everything done if my current obsession wasn't a book that I don't need to have even planned out until next April, but that's another blog post.

Here's the real question: Will I, one of the biggest planners around, be able to pants my way through the year?

The Future in Recap

Lately I've been watching a sci fi show based in Vancouver called Continuum.  It's about a group of people from the future that get out of prison (and their sentence of death) by travelling back into the past.  Except, instead of the six years they intended to go, they find themselves sixty-five years in the past.  Namely, they find themselves in 2012 (though I assume that it moves into 2013, as this actually started last year.)

I've actually been meaning to watch this show since it started, but the reason I finally opened the file on my computer is because I'm currently in the midst of planning out a sci fi, and I want to get a feel for the genre.  Granted, my novel is nothing like this show.  While they're both, at their most basic route, procedurals, my novel is set in a generation ship travelling to a new world.  There will be no time travel in it.  Still, I was able to pick out a few things that I need to watch for when I'm planning and writing my novel.

1) The language.  At one point one of the young members of the terrorist group that went back said something that was purely 2012 slang.  Now, I suppose this could be explained away because they were trying to blend in, but the truth is, in 2077 their slang and English is going to be a lot different than ours.  Language evolves.  While the core language stays the same, slang develops, and eventually our language accepts it.  So I find it just a little bit odd that in 65 years they somehow haven't developed new slang and are still using ours.  After all, we certainly don't speak the same as the people who were alive in the forties or the fifties.

For my novel, however, while I still need to figure out some new slang that would have developed before they took off from earth in this ship.  Once their on the ship, however, preserving their culture and language would most likely be a priority for them.  While they would have acquired new phrases simply to refer to their new circumstances in their surroundings, their language shouldn't be all that different.

2) Familiarity of the characters with their surroundings.  One of the things that this show does great is make sure that we understand just how comfortable the characters are with everything.  The main character --  a cop in the future who was accidentally transported to the past when she tried to stop the terrorist group from escaping -- is extremely comfortable with her own tech, which isn't available in the time she now finds herself in.  But at the same time, she's completely unfamiliar with the things around her in present day.  For example, when putting on mascara she has a hard time of it.  And driving a car?  Not something she learned at sixteen, that's for sure.

My first step is, of course, figuring out what their technology is going to look like.  Once I figure that out, though, I have to make sure that my character's aren't acting like this is something they've never seen before. They need to not just be familiar with it, but adept as well.  Their technology would actually probably be old for them, as it's highly unlikely that their technology is advancing while they're in space.  So it might not all work as well as it once did.

3) The differences in the world that have happened between now and then.  One of the things that really gets me is that in 2077 apparently corporal punishment is something that has been accepted in Canada.  To me, I think of this as a step back for our culture, but that's not really the problem I have with it.  The biggest problem I have with it is that it has yet to be explained how we managed to get from a world where we didn't have corporal punishment to one where it's an actual option.  I've been told by my friend who has seen more episodes than me that they do eventually tell us what I want to know, but every time they talk about it (because it is a major plot point) I get just a little bit more annoyed.  While I understand that you can't throw in all of that kind of information without it being obvious that's what you're doing, I do think they had ample time to get that information across.

In my own story, the changes will be fairly obvious from the get go, and getting that information out to the readers is going to be difficult.  I highly doubt that most of my characters will be thinking about the reason they're out in space, since it really is an every day occurrence for them.  I haven't figured out how I'm going to do this yet, but I am aware of the problem, and am going to figure it out.

There are many more problems that writing a sci fi deals with.  Like, for instance, how they're travelling from world to world.  What kind of technology they would have that allows them to get between the planets without having to wait years.  But I think it's kind of part of the fun.  Kind of.  After all, I was never that good in science class.

But I will get there.  Eventually this book will be planned, and I will be writing it either in June or July.  I'm excited, as it's a genre I've never tried to write before, while at the same time being utterly nervous for the exact same reason.

What do you guys think?  What annoys you when you're reading (or watching) a sci fi?  And how much science do you like to see in your sci fi?

A Tangled Mess of Cords

If there is one thing everyone knows about me, it's that I hate editing.  With a passion.  If I could, I would just write out perfect first drafts and never have to look at it again.  Sadly, because flawless first drafts are something dreams are made of, I have come to the realization that I will never be able to pump out first drafts that people should actually read.

I've accepted this as fact, and have moved on with my life.  So now I spend my time trying to look at editing in different ways.  Sometimes it's to try and show myself just how necessary editing really is (I once compared it to surgery.  The novel is broken, and when it goes into the operating room the bad parts are taken out and new stuff is put in to help fix it.  Not a perfect analogy, but close enough).  This latest one, though, was more to just explain how I feel when I'm editing.  So, I thought I would share it with you, so you could understand just why I hate editing so much.

I know from experience what the most annoying thing in the world is reaching into your pocket and pulling out the tangled mess of headphones that the perfectly knotted bundle you put in your pocket that morning has become.  I swear sometimes the headphones actually knot themselves, because that's the only explanation that I can come up with for how they end up so tangled.

Now, take those knotted headphones and add a whole bunch of other cords, all of them the deepest black so that you're not quite sure where one starts and the next end.  Or if the knots are even knots or just massive lumps of cord that have somehow formed out of what was once perfectly fine headphones.

That is what editing feels like to me.

I don't just mean that moment when I first pull the headphones out of my pocket, though I certainly do get that feeling when I first print off my manuscript and read thought it.  No, it's the process of untangling those headphones that is rather like editing.

The first thing you do is choose one cord.  Of course, you never know what this cord is attached to, but you're really hoping it's the headphones.  And you start to follow it until you get to the first knot, which is never all that hard to undo.  You laugh a little because this is going to be so much easier than you first thought.  Surely everything was going to be just as simple as that, and therefore you had nothing to worry about.

Right around then is when you hit the second knot.  Except this isn't just a knot.  It's a super knot.  It started out as a single knot that somehow got caught up with other knots.  Cord tangled around it, leaving you with a zillion strings coming out of it, and no idea how to even start untangling it.  That's when that tiny bit of hope you had been feeling disappears.

Eventually you get through it, painstakingly unravelling every knot, separating the cords so that you know which one is when, and when you're done...you have a cord in your hand that isn't tied to anything.

You have to start over.  For just a second you consider going to the store and buying new headphones.  Surely that must be easier than untangling this mess, right?  But, no.  You can't go to the store every time they get tangled.  You're never going to end up with those magical headphones that won't tangle (Okay, actually there are untangleable headphones, but shhh!)  No, you really should just suck it up and keep untangling.

So you grab a new cord and start all over again, painstakingly picking at each knot.  Slowly unravelling it, and discarding unusable cords along the way.  The further into it that you get, the more clearly you start to see the end.  You can see the loops and knots that created this mess, and you start to see how you can fix it.  You know before you unravel which cords aren't attached to the headphones, and you start to feel like maybe -- just maybe -- you can get them untangled!

And, eventually, you do.  Eventually those headphones come loose with one final tug, leaving you finally able to listen to your music in peace.  And in that brief shining moment you forget that the next time you put those headphones in your pocket they'll tangle again.  You ignore that those headphones are imperfect, with tiny knots that you didn't quite get still hanging around in it's length, and you relish the music that pours through them.

That is how I feel about editing.  And the next draft I do tends to get better and better.  Until I send it out to beta readers, and then it feels like I have those same cords in my hands begging to be untangled.  But, I know that eventually I will get through it.  I just have to take it one knot at a time!

How do you feel about editing?  Do you even find yourself wondering if that book is even worth it in the end?

Critique At the End of the Tunnel

In my critique group we, of course, exchange critiques.  Every fortnight (we've decided that we're resurrecting this generally considered archaic word, as it applies to so much in our lives) we get together and tell each other what we thought of the latest chapter that was sent in.  It's been extremely helpful, especially in areas like description, where we all lacked when we first started out.

We also started meeting up every couple of months with short stories and getting feedback on those.  We dubbed these meets 'Pen Duels'.  Basically what we do is I send out two writing prompts, and everyone has to come up with a story based on one or the other of the prompts.  Then we get together, read them out loud, then discuss.

This time we decided to do things a little bit differently.  Rather than getting together and reading them out, we sent them out to each other and are doing critiques on them before we get together to discuss on Saturday.

When we originally decided to do this, we talked about how these critiques shouldn't be too long.  Not like what we do for regular critique group.  Just small summaries of what we thought while we were reading through the stories.

Turns out, my brain isn't so good at holding back.  My first critique is behind me and it's just as long (if not longer) than anything that I've done for critique group.

This wouldn't be a problem, of course, except that I now have two more short stories to critique before Saturday, and a chapter to critique by Monday.

Yep.  I know.  We planned that well.

So now I'm sitting at home working on my pile of critiques rather than working on Pandora, which I'm supposed to be sending out at the end of the month.  I'm starting to feel like I might have taken on too much this year.

For the record, I've decided to cut back the epiphanies to only 100 for the year, rather than trying to get through the entire 201.  More manageable, and I won't feel like I'm going crazy.

Anyway, to get back on topic: Critiques.  Lots of critiques.

I'm working on critique # 2 right now, and I'm planning to, at the very least, get done the short stories tonight before I head to bed.  Though, if I really make myself do work, I might even get the chapter done.  Somehow, I doubt it, though.

So much to do, so little time to do it!

Are you in a critique group?  Do you ever find yourself spending more time on critiques than on writing?

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As a writer there are certain things that affect your ability to write.  For example, I find it nearly impossible to write when I have a headache.  Each word I drag out sends another round of pain shooting through my skull, and when I look back on any progress I may have made I realize just how bad it actually is.  Especially if the mood of the scene isn't angry or annoyed.

So, I've learned to adapt.  Or, rather, I've learned to accept the fact that writing is not going to get done if I can't get rid of the headache.  It's not an excuse, it's the matter of whether it's worth it in the end, and I've determined that it just isn't.

Of course, there are other things that can affect this as well.  Things like what happened to me on Monday.

On Monday I had a bad day.  It started right when I got to work (I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of my day job, but I can usually get through the day without thinking about quitting).  I'm not going to get into details of why it was such a bad day, but suffice it to say that by the time the day was over, my mood was foul.  And I left work early!

Unfortunately my bad mood didn't just affect my writing.  I didn't get to just go home and do nothing while moping around and indulging in my bad mood.  (I know what you're all thinking, but I let myself wallow in my bad moods.  They last one day, and they don't happen all that often, so I indulge.)  Instead I got to go to critique group.

Now, normally I love critique group.  I love getting feedback on my work and learning how other people interpret what I've put down on the page.  I enjoy the dynamic we have in our group and how much I learn as a writer from the process.

When I got there on Monday, however, and one of my critique partners said something negative, I found myself fighting with him.  Arguing his point and not letting him explain where he was coming from.  I was getting frustrated and angry, and I really couldn't control those emotions, even though I knew I was being irrational.

I even had the thought that I should just toss that novel and pretend I had never written it.

These aren't normal things for me.  While I love a good discussion about my work, or anyone's work, for that matter, what I was doing on Monday was fighting.  And defending my work.  And thinking that I should scrap an entire novel because of one moment of feedback?  I just spent the entire day yesterday restructuring a novel that I've already rewritten twice.  I don't just cast things off because of one piece of criticism.

It was hard for me to accept what was being said because my emotions were already shot from the hard day I'd had at my day job.

I hate that a job that I don't enjoy can make the thing that I do like so much harder.  This is the reason that I don't want to be working a day job.  Unfortunately I don't have a choice at this point.  I'm not published.  I don't have someone that just wants to let me work on my writing full time.  I have to continue to pay my bills in order to keep writing.

So I just have to work on trying to not let a bad day at work colour everything else I do.  This would be so much easier if I could compartmentalize.

Now to make it up to my critique partner.  Maybe I should buy his dinner at the next critique group.

Shackled to the Shelves

Lately I've been reading a book entitled 'How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy' by Orson Scott Card.  If you haven't guess, it's a craft book that helps you to write science fiction and fantasy.  While I do normally write within the fantasy genre (technically Urban Fantasy) sci-fi is a realm well outside of what I would normally even so much as read.

So I bought the book, and started reading it yesterday.  So far it's been really interesting.  We haven't gotten much into the hows of writing.  He started the book by trying to define the borders of science fiction.

It's really not as easy as it sounds, as science fiction is an extremely fluid genre.  It covers so much that's it's practically impossible to define the edges of it.  Regardless of that, he did a good job.  I believe I have a much better idea of what sci-fi is, and where my stories could fit into it.

During this process, however, he talked about being published sci-fi and getting stuck within the confines of that genre.

Now, with a genre such as sci-fi, this could be not so bad, simply because of how fluid it is.  A lot can fit under the header of 'sci-fi and fantasy'.  However, it got me thinking about my own writing, and how diverse it can be.

I will write anything from High Fantasy, to Sci-Fi to YA, to literary fiction (though those are few and far between for me.  I tend to prefer a little mystic in my novels).  The last thing I want is to be confined to a single genre for my entire career (assuming, of course, that my career ever does take off and I don't spend my life going from one day job to another...but that's another story altogether.)

My first novel that I'm hoping to publish is an Urban Fantasy.  Set around a werewolf (who happens to be an assassin) and what she goes through in order to satisfy her morals.  (Yep...you read that right...morals.  Go figure, right?)

My second novel is a YA centered around a young girl who discovers that she has the ability to manipulate (and communicate with) water.  It's about as different from Pandora as you can get.

Then there's the Sci-Fi I'm in the middle of planning.

With those three novels alone, I already know that I'm not going to be able to always publish under the same genre.

This gave me a moment of worry.  I mean, am I going to be pushing away publishers and agents because I don't write only in one genre?  Is that going to effect my fan base, or publishability?  Was I making it harder on myself than I need to, just because of what I'm writing?  Should I define myself as one type of writer?

It took me a second, but I managed to calm down. (I'd like to point out, this isn't the book's fault, but rather my own overactive imagination that cast shadows across books that aren't even written yet)

Yes, there will be agents or publishers out there that might be put off by a multi-genre author.  But, obviously, those are not the agents or publishers that I want to be dealing with.  I refuse to be caged into one genre.  In fact, I demand to be allowed to move as I will, and write what I chose!

A friend of mine Eric A. Satchwill said it the best:  'Let us fly and frolic freely among the wild worlds of words!  Shake off the shackles of the shelves!'

We're writers.  We live in the worlds created by our imaginations!  Why should we be limited to one world because someone says that's who we are?  We are free to be whomever we want, no matter how many books have made it to the shelves.

I am undefinable.  I am not a Sci-Fi writer.  I am not a YA writer.  I'm not even an Urban Fantasy writer.  I'm a writer, plain and simple, and I will not limit the worlds that I live in each and every day of my life!

Do you think that writers should be confined to one genre simply because they've been published there before?

Motivation, Thou Art Fickle

Well, it happened.  The thing I knew was going to happen.  How did I know?  Because it always does.  I always fall prey to the mindset of not wanting to do anything for a single day.  And that single day somehow always follows the day when I was too busy to finish all of my work.  And where does that leave me?

Behind.  That's where it leaves me.  I'm supposed to be finishing up chapter 10 today during my editing challenge, and instead I'm stuck on chapter 6 (which requires rewrites) and I shouldn't be.  Because yesterday I had the entire day to work, and instead I chose to watch TV shows.

Now, you might think, how is it that I could just decide to watch TV shows and not feel guilty over not doing the work I promised myself to do?  The answer to that probably isn't what you think.  I do feel guilty.  Unfortunately guilt doesn't seem to keep my motivation in overdrive.  It just makes me wallow.  And when I wallow, I don't get any work done, I just keep putting it off more and more until suddenly I find myself piled under a mountain of work that I would have been able to get through if I hadn't been so damn lazy.

Don't get my wrong, I'm not complaining.  I did this to myself, just like I always do.  And I'm going to try and make sure that I get the work done today.  (This means editing 5 chapters -- at least -- writing one epiphany, and this blog post.)  At least I've gotten started before it's dark outside.

Unfortunately, now is when my brain has actually started to feed me information about the novel I'm currently planning.  (I don't know a whole lot about it yet, but I can tell you that it's set two hundred years in the future where only the very rich own cars, and most people travel around via teleportation pads.  The main character is a spy who has been forgotten and has taken to drink and sleeping around to forget .)  The problem with that is that I need to have Stolen Magick edited to a second draft by the end of January.  The other novel isn't going to even be written until June at the earliest, so why am I focusing on something that doesn't need to be done for a couple more months?

Okay, maybe I've slipped in to complaining a little bit.  Sorry.

Anyway, I'm once more recommitting myself to my goals.  I need to get this book editing.  I've promised myself that I'm going to plan, write and edit four complete novels this year, and damn it, I'm going to do it!  I just have to make sure that the motivationless days don't come around very often.  I have things to do, and if that means that I can't always keep up on all of the shows that I love, well so be it.

This is what I want to do with my life, and I'm not going to let a little bit of laziness get in my way.  So it's back to the YA for me.  I've got some words to wrestle into shape.

Do you ever find yourself unable to stay motivated?  How do you force yourself to keep working?

Welcome to the World of Writing

One of my favourite quotes of all time comes from a movie called Stick It.  It's about ja girl who's forced back in to gymnastics after she walked out of the worlds.  If you haven't seen it, it's a fantastic movie.  Anyway, here's the quote:

Gymnastics tells you no. All day long. It mocks you over and over again. Telling you you're an idiot. That you're crazy. If you like running full-speed towards a stationary object, vault's for you. If you like pealing pieces of skin the size of quarters of your hands... bars is for you. Because the only thing more fun then rips, is when your rips get rips. It's super sexy. And floor, are you serious, I mean who doesn't want to parade around in a leotard getting wedgies and doing dorky choreography? It's delicious. If you like falling, then gymnastics is thee sport for you! You get to fall on your face, your ass, your back, your knees, and your pride! It's a good thing I didn't like falling... I LOVED IT!

So, why am I telling you this quote?  Quite simply because, in my eyes, I can equate it to writing.

Sure, as a writer we don't actually physically run toward a stationary object, but we do run toward the ending of a book, not knowing exactly how it's going to turn out.  We may not have skin peeling off our hands, but we have wrist problems from writing so much, and headaches from listening to characters.

But, most of all, it's the falling that really got to me.  We don't literally fall on our faces, our asses, our back or our knees.  But when you don't know where to take the book, it feels a little like you were running full out and landed on your face.  When you realize half way through a chapter that you don't need it, or the one before, it feels a little like the ground has fallen out beneath you and you find yourself on your ass not sure you want to do the work.

And out prides?  The pride of a writer takes a beating unlike almost any other profession in the world.  We work for ages on this book, something that we've poured our heart and soul in to, we fuss over it like it's our child, and worry about whether it's any good.  Then we send it out in to the world and hope that we've done everything right.

As I learned this past week, more often than not that results in a fall.  Our pride takes a beating as we get back rejection letters telling us that the work that we poured in to our manuscripts or short stories wasn't enough.  That we did it wrong.

Being a writer isn't all fun and games.  To be a writer, we have to (as the quote says) not just like falling, but love it!

We have to be able to get past those beatings and continue onward toward our ultimate goal.

With that in mind, I'm going to take that story and submit it somewhere else.  After I lick my wounds for a couple of days.  Because, no matter how bad of a beating my pride took, I know that this is what I want to do.  And if I want a story published, I have to be persistent.

Now, I just have to find somewhere that I think is good enough for my story, and hope they think it's the right fit too.

Wish me luck!

Have you gotten any rejection letters yet?  What do you do to keep yourself from thinking that you're not good enough?