In fact, I’ve had that tab open for, well, a week. He’s right though, writer’s write, and it’s something I’ve been very remiss about. I should be writing whether I feel like it or not, and whether I’m in the throes of hot inspiration or not.
I’ve been in a bad rut of not writing, of late. I’m sure that’s part of why I failed so hard at nanowrimo this year; I was out of the habit of writing. I’ve found, from personal experience, that if you can just get back into the habit of writing, then your muse will start coming round again, maybe even bringing cookies.
When do I write best? For me, either first thing in the morning or late in the evening after hubby goes to bed. I’m married to a noise person who always has to have the TV on or music going, when I need near silence to write. And since my writing space is the living room, it’s not like I have the right to tell him to stop everything.
So, that said, I’m putting up this post and pushing up my sleeves. Feel free to poke me and make sure I’m writing and not fiddling around on Farmville.
Okay, so I missed Monday. Monday is my crazy busy school day, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post on Monday’s or not. The other questions: Did I write?
Well, sort of. I got a couple paragraphs anyway. I grabbed the next First Line challenge and started. The blank page is intimidating! But at least I started something. Now to finish it. Of course Nanowrimo is just around the corner, so I better find the habit again, one way or another. I’m still not totally sure what I’m going to do for that.
On a slightly random topic, this Saturday, the 27th is free museum day, brought to you by the Smithsonian. So, if you want to check out something you might not normally (or just want to not pay admission), check out the website:
This is pretty much totally where I am right now with this blog:
It’s been WAAAAAY too long since I updated anything. No real good reason, other then maybe I’m not writing as much. I mean yes, I’ve started school, but truthfully that shouldn’t be getting in my way. Maybe I should to look at “War of Art” again. Or maybe I should quit putting it off and just do what I’ve already committed myself to do. Resistance is only as strong as I let it be.
Today, this morning, I’ll write something. Doesn’t matter if it’s a lousy chapter or a pathetic excuse for a short story. My Muse needs the exercise. I will be back here on Monday telling how it went.
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.
My good friend Paul wrote a really good and really interesting article (essay?) on plot bunnies that all of you should go read. I promise better entries then just links, later on this week, but for now I just had to share this:
I finished off the second draft, a little sooner then I thought. Mostly because as much as I wanted to add in an extra chapter there toward the end, I just couldn’t get my brain to manufacture what I needed. So it stands as is. 200 double spaced pages, 62,644 words.
The word count isn’t fantastic, but its still around 15,000 more then I started with at the end of draft one. The ‘I think’ part of the post title is because I’m just not totally happy with the ending as it is. Oh well, I’m calling it done. Now to email the other friend who hasn’t read it yet and offered to edit. And I’ll probably go down to the local copy shop and get a spiral bound copy made.
There is something oh so satisfying of holding a spiral bound copy of your manuscript.
I think the next project is going back and trying to finish “The Searchers”, a story I started several years ago that so far seems doomed to never get past chapter three. Yes, its about two guys on a road trip in a changed America. A friend of mine says I should try writing romance novels, or at least, something not so depressing. I really don’t think I can.
I also just want to give a shout out here to Dreamhost, who hosts my site. Wednesday I couldn’t get it to load at all. They not only fixed the problem, but I think it runs faster then ever. Thanks!
Okay, looks like this is the week you get to read about me struggling to finish this draft. I confess Monday I didn’t work on it at all. Yesterday I reminded myself I needed to just get on with it and kicked out another chapter. Today I’m going to hopefully write the chapter that needs to be done from scratch. After that, is one more chapter. And I think the final chapter from the first draft shouldn’t need a lot of work. So, I’m looking at being done by Friday, as I said before.
Yesterday while I was out I found myself browsing a book section, feeling anxious about things. Picked up “M is for Magic” by Neil Gaiman. Using that as bribery right now. No reading it until I finish. It was also pointed out to me that “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow is available online under Creative Commons, because, well, it is Cory Doctorow. I really enjoyed “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” last year, so I’ll undoubtedly read this one too, at some point. Probably go ahead and buy it though.
Between Cory and Neil and some others I think I need to seriously spend some more time in the YA section.
Monday I talked about writing, today I’m talking about rewriting. This is something else that’s up to to the writer, to some extent. But I’ve found the method that works for me:
One chapter at a time.
Well first I let the story sit for at least a week. Then I go through and give it a read, making notes on it of things I want to change, chapters or scenes I need to insert, things like that. Then I sit down and go through one chapter at a time. Depending on how much I’m working on it and how much needs to change a chapter can take me from a day or two to a week.
For instance, in my current main project, Grace, I had to rework the beginning quite a bit. Of course some of that was due to things I found out at the end of the book, but it was also necessary to set certain things up better.
Something else I do is I have a couple of people that read behind me. Now a lot of authors say the 1st draft should be some hidden thing, done in secret; like a mad scientist working away from prying eyes. I can’t do that. I almost always have to write to an audience of some kind, even on a first draft. It gives me motivation to know that someone besides me wants to know what happens next. And I’m confident enough in my writing to not take all of their suggestions.
This is even more important on a second draft. My current two main readers get the story chapter by chapter, as I finish them. They help clean up my inevitable then/than mistakes, missing words and point out awkward passages. Hopefully by draft 2 I don’t have so many of those, but especially on sections where I’m adding a lot it again helps to have a second set of eyes.
They also help reassure me regarding the question I try to keep most in mind: Does all this make sense? After all, if a character does something, well, out of character, they better have a good reason!
I don’t mind rewriting, for the most part. Of course there are times when I want to throw up my hands and be done with it, but that happens in all the drafts. Like I said on Monday the important thing is to just put one word in front of another, push on through no matter how much you want to give up. After all, when flying an airplane, the way to get out of a stall is to drop the stick and dive.
A friend of mine asked me the other day about how I write my first drafts. The answer isn’t just in the how, its in the why. After all, technically speaking, writing a first draft of anything is simply putting one word after another, stringing sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters. Ultimately, I suppose I write because I have a story to tell; characters and an interesting setting.
I frequently don’t know how a story is going to end when I start. And if I know the end I certainly don’t know everything in the middle. Usually my stories evolve as characters face various challenges. The story lies in their reactions to those challenges. It’s my job as a writer to know the characters well enough to know how they would realistically react. And sometimes they surprise me, which is almost always wonderful and scary.
The method of writing is pretty much personal preference. For me, I have to write linearly, even if I have an awesome idea for a scene later on. I’ve found, in my experience, that if i skip around, I never go back and fill in the missing scenes. But again, thats up to the author. Besides, for me, if i write in a linear fashion I get the experience of finding out what happens next as I go along. I also have the probably bad habit of keeping most of the stuff of a story in my head, instead of taking notes.
Let me leave you with a link. This is one of the best songs out there about being creative. It’s “Die, Vampire, Die” from [Title of Show], an off Broadway musical. Song has profanity.
I’ve been working on this rewrite of Grace for a while. The first part hummed along pretty well, even with new stuff I added in. Now though I’m in the doldrums of the middle of the story and in need of adding another chapter. This particular Sargasso Sea is starting to drive me a bit batty. It’s important that this chapter happens and its important that I try and describe the situation this character is in and how they are feeling, but I’m tempted to metaphorically crumble up everything I wrote yesterday and toss it in the bin.
Show don’t tell, right? But its hard to do that when the character is trying to be numb and apathetic. Maybe I need to come up with something so awful that they have to react, but I kind of have that already in the next chapter and I’d like to leave that where it is. Basically several months have to go by with little happening. As tempting as it is to just write “and nothing of any importance happened”, that won’t exactly work. Maybe something awful happens and they don’t react. That would at least show some of their state of mind.
And I think I’m babbling a bit. Sorry, readers. Everyone has walls from time to time, thats for certain. The good thing is this story is already done, it just needs work. The most important thing about hitting blocks though is to just work through it. Sometimes all you can do is write junk until the right words come along.