Category: writing

May Madness

I knew at the beginning of the year when I set my personal goals that I was being overly ambitions. But it seemed doable. It still seems doable, although my brain does not seem to share my belief. For the last two weeks, I’ve written nothing. Nada. Zilch. On the upside, I did get the 2YN story edited. Again. And I’m happier with this draft. Hoping to start sending it out soon. It’s now tentatively titled Charming Dragons. I wrote about 37,000 words in the first two weeks of the month, so May wasn’t a total bust, but I’d hoped to finish the draft of the Witches sequel this month, and that didn’t happen. It didn’t even come close to happening.

However, I do have a spiffy new plan to finish writing the three stories I’m currently working on (zombie story, Witches sequel, werewolf story), by the end of August, along with the sequel to Charming Dragons. And edit Witches AND Tempest of Angels. So, clearly I haven’t passed the overly-ambitious part of the year yet. 🙂 I do have set word count goals every day, and certain days to work on certain stories. I’m hoping the juggling act will keep me from burning out on any one story. At least, that’s the plan.

Now I’m off to brainstorm the new story. Wish me luck!

The Werewolves are Winning

I’ve been really bad about keeping this blog updated lately. Sorry. On the up side, I have been getting a lot of writing done. A lot. I’m a little over 50k into the sequel to Witches. That’s flowing along pretty well, and the action is heating up. I’m being mean to Bali at the moment, but hey, somebody’s gotta do it, right? She’ll thank me later, when everything blows over. (Probably.)

I’ve been busy killing zombies, too. Being as gross as possible is pretty cool. And I’ve actually really enjoyed writing two military men characters. Most of my characters are normally fairly clean-mouthed. But not Sammy and Luke. Not in this chapter, anyway. But what can you expect when you’re under attack by hordes of flesh-craving zombies? They’re very persistent, I’ll give them that. Sammy, as usual, provides a shot of humor to even the direst situation. I’ll be sorry to finish writing him…

Not to mention getting to know Chance’s new high school in the Werewolf story. Can I just say that she has a really crappy first day at her new school? It’s great, really. For me. Not for her. (She’d probably hate me, and rightly so.) She is so much fun to write. Clearly, I haven’t progressed much (mentally) past my high school days. Or so it seems when I sit down to write her. She practically jumps through the keyboard and onto the page, full of snarky comments and attitude (not to mention her to-die-for wardrobe). Her new friend Benjy has really surprised me, too. I had no idea he was going to turn out quite like he has. Actually, even though the sequel to Witches is coming along so well, and I’m enjoying the zombie story, too, my Muse is itching to play in Chance’s world almost exclusively. I know discipline is good for a writer, but it seems like I get my pages done for Chance in a split second, and sometimes, it’s a whole lot harder to hit my goals on the other stories. I think I’m going to have to devote one day a week completely to Chance’s story. That should satisfy my Muse, and give her incentive to hit my goals on anything else I’m working on. Sounds like a plan.

I probably won’t post here again until sometime late next week. I’ll be flying to Dallas this Thursday, and then my best friend and I are driving to Tulsa for Conestoga. This year should be interesting. It’s in April instead of July this year, so most of the “regular” writers won’t be there. I’m a little disappointed, but I’m looking at it as an opportunity to find new favorites. After all, I didn’t know most of the regulars when I first went to Conestoga in 2007.

No, I Haven’t Fallen Off The Face Of The Earth…

…Why do you ask? I did go on a trip home to Texas at the end of March for a week, so that kind of knocked me out of my routine. But now I’m getting back into the swing of things, and making significant progress.

I’ve finished up this round of edits for the Atlantis story, now tentatively titled Heart of the Sea. I’ll be looking for beta readers for it soon, but I think this draft is stronger than the last one. I’m a little too close to it at this point to be sure, so only time will tell.

The zombie story is actually coming along quite well. The rest of it is completely figured out and outlined. Yay! I think that’s one thing that sort of held me back when I worked on my chapters: not knowing quite how everything would work out. Roughly twelve chapters left, so maybe three months or so until the first draft is finished. The chapter I’m working on now should be fun, lots of zombie blood and guts!

The werewolf story is actually smoothing out now. I went back and wrote a couple of chapters over the main turning point in Chance’s life. I wanted to get the details of what had happened worked out in my mind, and I wanted to see if my first instinct to start in the other spot was correct. It was, but writing those chapters gave me a much better feel for the story itself and what’s going on. Surprisingly, it’s going well, considering I’m working outline-free.

The sequel to Witches is going very well right now. I’m about 30k in, and the characters, my old friends, are still very much alive and breathing for me. I know where this one is going, and I’m having a lot of fun. It’s good to get back to my oldest set of characters. I’m hoping everything keeps coming together like it has been.

Milestone

Today I started writing the sequel to Witches. I was terrified to touch the keyboard. Terrified. I spent roughly 7 1/2 years working on Witches (Not that it’s done yet. Oh, no. Not by any means.), and it’s my baby. So I’m terribly afraid to mess up its little sister. Even though this story is completely outlined already, and ready to go. I was still scared to start writing.

But when I made myself start, it flowed surprisingly easy. The characters were just there, in my head, right where I left off. Like it hadn’t been two years since I did anything but editing on the story. It was great, really. And unlike last time, I already know all the horrible things I’m going to do to my characters…

A Site to Remember

There are a lot of resources available on the internet to writers. Everything from dictionaries to blogs. One of the best websites I’ve seen for writers is Forward Motion. I’ve been a member there for about three years, although the first year or so I spent basically no time there. Then a friend of mine, Tamara Siler Jones (If you haven’t read her books, you should! She writes forensic murder mysteries in a fantasy setting, and she’s wonderful. You should check out her first book, Ghosts in the Snow.), suggested I look for a crit group on Forward Motion. I was fortunate enough to get accepted to a group, and in the two years I’ve been a member of the group, I’ve learned a tremendous amount. Seriously. I owe that group a huge thank you for how much they’ve helped me grow as a writer.

Forward Motion has pretty much everything you can imagine that a writer might need. Chats (Not that I’ve ever joined one. Chatting isn’t really my thing.) There are message boards for every genre you can imagine, and for anything else you want. Grammar questions. Research topics. A place to rant. A board for keeping track of agent searches. There are dares to do (outlining, word counts). Marathons to compete in. You can find worldbuilding help. Market reports. Even discussions on writing techniques. (And now I feel like I’m trying to sell real estate. See the lovely view from this window…)

Seriously, though, if you’re looking for a great, supportive community for writers, Forward Motion is a place you should check out. Everyone I’ve met there is friendly and helpful, and if they don’t know the answer to something, they can usually point you in the right direction.

On Goals

I think it’s important to set goals in writing. I don’t mean goals like “Write the next Great American Novel”, or anything like that, either. I do have a list of writing goals, some of which I’ve already accomplished, but many more that I hope to. Finishing the first drafts of Witches and Shadows of Stone are both on there, although on the list Shadows is simply called “the nomad story”. There are other stories on the list right now, five to be exact, and I’m actually working on one of them for my 2YN story. But there are other things on the list as well. Like finding an agent and hopefully getting lucky enough to not have to work full-time at the day job. Stuff like that. Those are the big writing goals, as far as I’m concerned. These goals are always in the back of my mind, and they keep me going.

But what really keeps me motivated are the smaller goals, like word count goals. For most of the first draft of Witches, I didn’t have any sort of goals. When I sat down to write, I just wrote until I felt like stopping. Some days I tried to finish up a chapter, but that was as well defined as my goals got. That is possibly the reason it took me so long to finish writing Witches (that and the total lack of an outline). I was a bit better prepared when I started Shadows last year for NaNo. I had a phase outline, and I had set myself the personal goal of 80k words (Yes, for my first NaNo. I can’t help it; I’m a little bit of an overachiever. I’m trying to overcome that!), which came down to 20k a week, or about 2.9k a day. That was a pretty high goal for someone who had never bothered to keep up with word count before. But it went well, and I hit my goal. Some days I didn’t manage to write at all, but there were a couple of days I hit 7.5k, and I was really proud. Seeing the word count go up was enough to keep me motivated, to keep my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. And that’s the important part, right? That you’re actually writing. It could be crappy first draft material, but you’re writing, and it’s so much easier to fix something that’s actually written than something that’s not.

I’m currently working on my 2YN story. I don’t have a daily word count goal, but my weekly goal is 5k. Now, I type fast, and I have a phase outline for this story, so it shouldn’t be too hard to hit a measly 5k. Sadly, I’ve been behind since the first week. Only four weeks in, and I’ve been behind for a month. Sigh. The good news is, I should be caught up today. I only needed 3k to catch up, and I’ve already done 1k of that, so my numbers should all add up by tonight. Which is good, because I hate being behind. It discourages me, makes it harder for me to work.

I figure if I’m caught up on the writing, maybe that will motivate me to work on the editing. I need to finish this draft of Shadows, but I’ve pretty much lost my thoughts on where I was. And then there’s the looming specter of editing the behemoth that is Witches. So, if anyone has any ideas on how set motivating goals for editing, I’d love to hear them.

Why write?

Where does the motivation to write come from? What makes you want to sit down at the computer, the typewriter, or the notebook and struggle to get the words down on paper? For me, it’s the story. The characters and some idea of the plot usually come to me at the same time. Maybe just a brief flash, and I really have no idea who the characters are just yet, but a glimpse of it just pops into my mind. Through Shadowed Stone came to me in a dream. A dream about a nomadic culture that moves around constantly, from place to place. I woke up thinking “Why do they move around so much? What are they running from?” And that was it for several years. In my mind, “the nomad story” just sat there, fermenting. And then one day, I realized that somehow a girl from this world belonged in that other, nomadic world, and that her name was Amaya. Oh, and one of the tribesmen was named Bowyn. Again, the idea sat there and did nothing but stew in its own juices.

Then, last year, around August or so, I think, I heard about NaNo, and thought “Hey, that sounds like a really cool idea.” I’d been struggling with Witches for a long time by then, over six years, and I think my brain needed a break. Suddenly, the nomad story sat up and took notice, raising its hand in the back of my mind and saying “I think I’m almost ready now.” And I knew what the nomads where running from. That’s how Through Shadowed Stone came to be. I wrote 80k words during NaNoWriMo 2006, and finished up the other 23k in December. I know that’s a lot of words, but I enjoyed writing the story. It was exciting to sit down at the computer and start typing. I wanted to know what happened!

That story was the first time I completely outlined a story before I started writing. (Okay, to be honest, Witches is the only other story I’ve ever written, and I had a small, partial outline of it that I strayed away from early in the writing. Say two years in.) I did a phase outline, which worked really well for me, since I could put in a bit of the scene and any really great snippets of detail that occurred to me. About halfway through the outline, I got a huge surprise, then several phases later, another. And still I was excited to start writing it. Couldn’t wait ’til writing time. I finished the story on New Year’s Eve.

Then I went back to Witches, determined to finally, finally finish it. This time my motivation wasn’t the excitement of the story. I’d lost a great deal of that in six years. But the characters wouldn’t leave me alone! (Still aren’t, as a matter of fact.) It was mainly Kahleena berating me, nagging at me to get going. Bali’s quieter, but she was there in the background, supporting Kahleena. And Julien…well, he’s more demanding. He insisted that I work on the story, and wouldn’t let me rest if I didn’t. So I did, and finished it up in February. I’m sort of working on editing it. It’s way too long, so I need to cut about half of it, and that’s a rather intimidating task for me, so I’m procrastinating.

I just started writing the story for my 2YN class on Forward Motion, and this one’s in first person, so it’s a bit of a struggle. The first chapter was hard, and it was only 1500 words! Now I’m working on Chapter Two, and it’s getting a bit easier. Samantha is coming through more clearly to me now. I have this one outlined, too, but it’s not quite as detailed as the outline for Through Shadowed Stone. I left some wiggle room, knowing I’ll need to add some things in (which is kind of new, since I have to cut so much from Witches). Right now, it’s the story that’s motivating me to write. Maybe soon it will be Samantha. Who knows?