Merinda’s Meanderings

Wil Wheaton wrote an excellent post yesterday on the writing process. Well not just on the writing process, but about how he finds inspiration and assurance from other writing blogs. I’m surprised he doesn’t mention Neil Gaiman’s blog on his list, but that’s one I also make sure I read.

WWdN: In Exile: i thought i was the only one.

Was cleaning up my hard drive a bit the other day, which mostly just means getting rid of stuff I’m not using. Dropbox was helpful as I put my writing on there (with a backup of course) so I can get to it from anywhere. And as is usually the case I started poking around the scraps of old material.

I recently let a friend of mine read the first three chapters of a story I started, well originally probably around 2003 or 2004. It was my story for the novel writing class I took, so I have a pretty solid first three chapters. But, that’s the problem. I only have a first three chapters. I’ve never been able to get the characters to go ahead and get started on chapter four.

I suppose this is better then the story scraps I have where it’s only a few sentences or a paragraph, but still, this story has potential, if I just were to sit down and work at it. After all, I’ve already proven to myself that I can dust off an older story, push it through and finish it.

I think part of my hesitation with this one is that I’ve been doing the ‘two people on a road trip’ thing a few times now. I definitely think I’ll be doing something different for Nano this year.

Bit of a lazy post, but at lesat I’m posting something. My friend Sonja posted yesterday about a service called Dropbox. Check out her review and if anyone is interested I’ve got eight invites, so, drop me an email, first come first serve.

Basically it’s a service that pretty darn seamlessly shares files between computers with a minimum of hastle. And it’s free. Just drop the file in and it’s, err, magically availble at all the computers you have dropbox loaded on. Pretty darn neat.

First off, yes I freely admit I’ve been slacky on updating this blog. No good reason for it either. So I apologize and will attempt to get back to my regular schedule. I am, however, also starting college next week, so if I am slow, that may be the reason, but I’m going to try anyway.

That said, today I wanted to share a link via Lifehacker: Musician Ryan Adams’ Success Secret.

The article talks about Ryan Adams and his approach to being a musician and a songwriter. Ultimately, it’s simple: he’s being paid to write and record songs, so he writes a couple songs a week. Nothing earth shattering, but truly simple. To quote the article:

“It implies that if you don’t take the simple action, then you cease to be. A song writer who doesn’t write songs ceases to be a song writer. An author who doesn’t write ceases to be an author. A non-smoker who doesn’t keep cigarettes out of his mouth ceases to be a non-smoker.”

Most of us have busy lives and a thousand other things we need to do, or even, we’d rather be doing. Lately I’ve really been learning the value of the fifteen minute timer. There are plenty of busy people who steal hours late in the night to do that thing they truly love doing. Even if sometimes they hate it.

So, I’m sure I can find fifteen minutes somewhere to pull together a decent blog entry a few times a week. Just like I make sure I write every day, even if it’s something I think is worthless, at least I’m giving my muse it’s daily workout. Writing is not about the flash of inspiration, though when it happens, it’s nice. Writing is about being consistent. About sitting down and filling up a page, then the next one, then the one after that. Even if you never see your name on the spine of a book, by doing, you succeed.

My friend Sonja wrote an excellent post yesterday about query letters and offers up one of her own for analysis. She also has links to a couple more like that.

Query Letters: An Analysis

I think need to work on my own query letter some more.

Anyone who has known me for longer then about five minutes knows I’m a lousy housekeeper. Now you’re wondering what that has to do with writing.

I’ve been cleaning house, last week, into this, using a couple of online tools (and pandora), that would be equally useful to the writer.

To me, one of the best tools a writer can have is a simple timer. Feeling unmotivated? Set the timer for ten or fifteen minutes and just write what you can in that time. I’ve found that with writing, ten minutes is a good set for me. I don’t get much more done in fifteen. In nanowrimo we call them word wars, but really you can do them anytime. Like if your stuck on something, or just can’t seem to finish a scene, or are just looking to squeeze some writing into a busy day.

The other useful website I’ve been using is NowDoThis. It’s simple enough. Enter whatever tasks you want to get done, in the order you want to do them. The site gives them back to you, one at a time, with a shiny “Done” button when you are finished with that task. Then it gives you the next one. I’ve realized I’m a bit scatterbrained and I frequently have about five things I want to do at once, which means I’ll forget something or not finish something else. With this I can concentrate on the task at hand and pretend the next one doesn’t exist quite yet. This could be used to as well as a sort of outlining tool.

I know I ended up taking last week off. Promise this week I’ll get back on schedule!

My friend Marna’s very first book just went live yesterday, it’s an ebook and everyone should go buy it here:

Strip by Marna Martin

And because Marna is just cool like that and her book lends itself she set up a cafepress shop.

And I should point out my other friend Sonja also has ebooks, you can find those here:

Cat in the Mist and Love in Shadow by Sonja Foust

Randy Pausch died a few days ago. I admit I’d never heard of him, or this lecture, until then, but really, you should watch it. It runs about an hour and fifteen minutes. Fantastic, powerful stuff.

I’m not so good with romantic things, I don’t think. I’m a happily married woman (most of the time), but when it comes to my stories I don’t think I’m very good at it. Maybe I’m okay at writing family dynamics, and maybe I just need to sit down and make myself write a love story. I like romance and the sad and the sweet.

Entertainment Weekly has a photo essay on the “Top 25 Most Romantic Gestures in Film“, that I thought was pretty good. Just have to learn to say with words what sometimes seems easier with pictures. Love is often silent.

Slightly off topic, my friend Autumn wrote a really good entry on Inner Demons you ought to give a read.

For me, one of the most interesting things in being a writer is exploring what makes people tick. What sort of things happened in their past that makes them what they are at this point? Bad guys, or good guys, they are that way for a reason.

One thing I’ve noticed in my stories is I’m apparently a big believer in one person making a difference. Not just in the world, but in a person. I can give someone the worst, most evil background I can think of, but if one person comes into their lives at some crucial point, who loves them regardless, that can totally turn them around, despite everything.

Maybe that just means I’m an optimist.

I almost always have way more background for my characters then I can ever really use. As I’ve mentioned before I’m a big fan of the 100 Questions for Characters. It may not be totally vital to know what a characters favorite food is, but then again, it may become something of a running joke. Like one of my characters fondness for peanut butter. One of the ways his family shows they care is by bringing him jars (in this world you can’t just run to the store for it). It’s a small thing, but it has a point.

And it doesn’t always have to be some major, earth-shattering event that makes a person. Maybe they got embarrassed in front of their classmates in school. Or took money out of their parents purse. Maybe they saw something bad, and didn’t stop it or report it. All those little things add up to make a person what they are. And learning those things is one of my favorite things about being a writer.