Tag: writing routine

whitechapel

Editing The Paradise Swarm

Posted on by Claire

As you may have seen on twitter a few weeks back, I finished the first draft of The Paradise Swarm. It’s riddled with plot holes and doesn’t quite have an ending, but it’s done! Honestly, I was starting to doubt I would actually get even this far.

I’ve taken a couple of weeks off, and now it’s time to whip that novel into shape. I know editing makes some writers want to tear their own hair out, but I enjoy the process immensely. Being able to take the book apart and put it back together again better to make it look like I was really smart in the first place is just exhilarating.

Anyway, Phase One of Operation Editing is to read the novel critically and make notes. I’m putting the manuscript through Holly Lisle’s How To Revise Your Novel course, which I tried once before and found really useful. It’s an in-depth course which is going to take a long time to work through, but I know it’ll make the book heaps better.

So far, I’ve made notes on the first six chapters and I’ve found some stuff there that’s not too shabby. Of course, there is a lot that needs fixing (specifically, a lot that is not at all subtle), but by and large, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I can’t lie, the amount of changes to be made is slightly terrifying.

Here are a few things I know for a fact I’ll have to do:
editingarkane

  • Re-write at least two chapters in a different PoV, most likely many more than that.
     
  • Write in the characters’ motivations and reasoning for deciding to work together. Currently the reasoning is very obviously “So that plot can happen” and that’s not going to fly.
     
  • Add all the things that my past self put in brackets for my future self to add in. Darn past self, I hate her.
     
  • Fix the made up science! Luckily as the novel happens in the 1850s, it’s okay for the characters not to properly understand the made-up science.
     

EEP!! So much work to do! I’m going to see my family in a few days and flying out early in the morning. I’m hoping to get some work done as I’m travelling and while I’m on holidays.

Please let me know if you’ve got any advice from your own editing experience, or if you know any good resources I should check out! And wish me luck…

writers block

Writing atrophy

Posted on by Claire

I haven’t written a word of fiction for more than three months.

Real life has been very busy, with work going into overdrive at my office and having to move.

Of course I’m sure it didn’t help that I launched an exciting and time-consuming new website only a few weeks ago, as soon as work resumed its normal level of business.

Needless to say, I’ve already fallen off the Get Your Words Out wagon. I tell myself that it’s because I don’t use LJ much at all anymore that I’ve missed reporting my wordcount so many months in a row, but in truth I’m sure that if I’d had anything positive to report, I would have been all over my journal posting about it.

I remember how excited I was last month to start writing again, and how much I relished the opportunity to dedicate a full afternoon to The Paradise Swarm. The afternoon came and I sat in front of my open Scrivener document for a good 30 minutes, typing and deleting sentence fragments over and over again. I eventually had to pick up a book of prompts and exercises and work on that for an hour or so to warm up my writing muscles, before I was able to produce a miserly and pretty useless few hundred words. Cue disappointment, lack of self-belief, and all that jazz.

I know this is all very ‘woe is me’ but I only mean to underline how much more daunting the prospect of writing regularly becomes when one doesn’t do it, or has never successfully done it. I love my story, and I want to make progress on it. However slowly I was writing last year, I want to regain at least that.

So, I’m going to keep trying, and keep looking for strategies to motivate myself, and keep the writing ball rolling once I’ve actually started again. Does anyone have tips or strategies to keep the mojo going when life or work gets in the way?

oldtypewriter

Writing in non-November Months

Posted on by Claire

I had only written a few things before I moved to the UK, including some really bad fanfiction and a generic epic fantasy first chapter starring a feisty young princess with flowing red hair and a mysterious elf with two apostrophes in his name.

It was only after my first Nanowrimo, having met the amazing NanoLondon writing community, that I started to write original fiction.

I didn’t write much, and my output was extremely inconsistent in terms of quantity.
Let’s not discuss the quality, okay?

Last year I wrote 100,000 words across all of my writing projects, including this blog – meaning that it took eleven non-November months to write as much as I wrote during November. Not a great result, though it was definitely progress. Earlier this year, I entered a LiveJournal challenge called Get Your Words Out, aiming for 150,000 words in the year.

I won’t lie, I’m not keeping up with the monthly goals I’ve set for myself at the moment, but the year is only just beginning. I’m hoping I’ll be able to pick up the pace once I’ve gotten more practise under my belt. I’m always trying to set up regular writing habits for myself, and I’ve never been very successful at it. When I started writing The Paradise Swarm again, though, with a plan, a word count goal, and some scenes in mind, things seemed to pick up quite a bit.

Progress is definitely very slow, but it is at least steady, and I think the slower pace allows for better quality too. I brought some of the novel to read to my Critique Group, who were very encouraging and told me to just keep writing.

As I tend to fall prey fairly easily to the ‘Work on this one scene for six months until it shines’ monster, I made an extra effort to take that one on board. One scene gave me quite a bit of grief, so much so, that in the end I straight up ignored it and moved on to the next. Truth be told, as it’s currently in Chapter Two, and I’m pretty bad at beginnings, it’s probably going to die a nasty death later on, rather than being re-written. So all’s good.

The next few months look to be fairly bad in terms of productivity as work is getting busier and I have to move soon, but I’m going to try and keep writing through the chaos.

Writing

Writing Goals for 2013

Posted on by Claire

As a great lover of lists, particularly To-Do ones, I love the New Year.

It’s time to look back over the past year (pretty good, all things considered), and set myself some goals for the coming 12 months.

I’ve started a list of Things To Do in 2013 over at DayZeroProject.com, including some writing goals.

Finish the first draft of The Paradise Swarm
This is my main objective for the year. As I currently only have 8,000 words done out of a planned 90,000, it’s going to be tricky and take some serious work, but I’m going to give it a go anyway. I’m hoping to write 2,000 words a week in order to finish the draft by October and be ready to start something new for NaNoWriMo.

Write 10 pieces of flash fiction
As much as I want to plough on with The Paradise Swarm, I’ve been wanting to write more short form. Ten stories of less than a thousand words (that’s one a month until NaNoWriMo) should be easy enough to manage in terms of word count, but still a good exercise.

Complete NaNoWriMo
This will be my sixth year entering, and hopefully my fifth win. I’m slowly but steadily getting better at balancing being a Municipal Liaison for a busy city and writing a first draft in a month, so I’m sure 2013 will be a great Nano.

Maintain blog and post regularly
I don’t write very fast and tend to second guess a lot of what I put down on the page as I write it. Blogging has been a great way for me to practice writing in a more fluid manner, so I definitely want to do more of that.

Also on my long list: Read 52 books (I’ve attempted it for the past couple of years and only barely managed it in 2011) and Attend writing group regularly (I’ve already started doing that, but I’m seeing the benefits so clearly I want to make sure I keep going).

notecards

Outlining Nerdiness

Posted on by Claire

I must confess, I’m a complete outlining nerd.

I scheme, plot, sketch and play around with my ideas pre-November, stopping just short of the ‘No prose before November’ rule.

When I tried discovery writing (Nano ’09 and ’10), I found myself wandering aimlessly from November 5th onwards. Though I enjoyed writing these novels, I know that’s really not what works best for me.

That’s not to say discovery writing isn’t a good way to go (in fact it might be the best way to go for you), but simply that there are about as many ways to get ready for Nano as there are Wrimos.

So if you’d like to do some plotting now, here are some resources and techniques I find useful:

Basic structure

In order to keep up with the pace of month-long noveling, I like to have a structure in place before I start. Not necessarily something extremely detailed, but a road map I can turn to when I don’t know what my characters should do next.

I swear by the first few steps of writer Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. The idea is to start with the most basic summary of your novel possible, then expand in stages (five sentences, then five paragraphs):

[box]A reconnaissance squad travels across the galaxy to investigate an unresponsive colony.

Setup – A Federation of Planets reconnaissance squad sets off on a mission to the other side of the galaxy.

Initial Problem – A freak storm badly damages the ship, forcing the Captain to take the mission off-course in search of affordable repairs.

Bigger problem – As soon as it resumes its course, the freshly-fixed ship is targeted from the inside by a saboteur, and from the outside by a massive, top-of-the-range rebel warship with a grudge.

Biggest problem – When the truth and horror of the Federation’s methods come out into the open, the crew turn onto one another, treason and murder afoot.

Resolution – Having gotten rid of the spy-turned-assassin, the crew land safely at the colony they were sent to investigate and part ways, escaping the Federation’s dictatorship.[/box]

A word of warning though, I never go past step four as the later steps are way too detailed even for me (it makes for an interesting read, but I would certainly not recommend it for Nano).

Arcs, arcs, arcs

I use the Seven-Point Structure, popularised by YA-author and podcaster Dan Wells to situate character arcs and subplots in relation to the main plot. My favourite way to do this is in a table where I can check things at a glance:

[box]

Structure Main storyline Comms Officer
Hook
Initial situation		 Crew leaves home planet Works for Federation, has memory loss
Plot turn 1
Call to adventure		 Mission is taken off-course Hears foreign language she can understand
Pinch 1
Added pressure		 Discovery of broken component Realises she is being watched by Federation
Mid-Point
From reaction to action		 Attacked by rebel warship Hears reports of Federation modifying memories
Pinch 2
Take stand alone		 Betrayed by one of their own Gets evidence of what the Federation did
Plot turn 2
Power is in you		 Get rid of the saboteur Decides to trust rebel captain
Resolution
End situation		 Crew arrives at destination planet Breaks conditioning, recovers true identity

[/box]

Have a listen to Episode 7.41 of Writing Excuses for a five-minutes explanation of the system, or if (like me) you’re a dork for in-depth structural analysis, check out Wells’ 5-part YouTube series on the subject.

Filling in the gaps

Once I’ve got a continuous thread to cling to, I start making some emergency bucket lists. Brainstorming for these is pretty simple: I set a timer for 10 minutes and jot down as many ideas as possible without pausing. A lot of what comes out never gets used, but the coolest ideas make it in my notebook.

Around week two, when I have absolutely no idea what should happen next, I’ll use these as custom prompts. For instance, here are some of the dangers I can incorporate if I need a space variant of the ‘Just have something blow up’ strategy:

[box]
Dangers:

  • Space pirates, smuggles, slavers
  • Ship boarded by rebels
  • Solar storm, meteor showers
  • Lose lights, power, access to controls
  • Break vital piece of equipment

[/box]

If you’re of the insane Plot-A-Lot kind, share your Nano outlining tips and tricks below!

Originally posted at www.nanolondon.org.