Wow. It just fully hit me that NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday. And I’d hoped to partake this year as well.

I have to admit, my brain is kind of fried. Wouldn’t be surprised if yours is too. But this is the job. Time to buckle down and…

Okay, look. This is actually, legally, my career. I’ve hit that fortunate point where I don’t have to do anything else except write (and maybe watch the occasional B-movie now and then while I build toy soldiers). I mean, at this point my accountant and the IRS both consider me a full-time writer.

And maybe some of you are there too. Or maybe you’re aspiring to be there. And because you are, and because you take this seriously, you’re trying your god-damndest to treat this like a real job. You understand writing is work, and it needs to happen if you want to advance.

So one important thing to remember.

You get days off from work.

Sometimes, I think we get so caught up in that idea of writing as a career and having to write every day that we forget we can just… take a sick day. Hell, take a personal day. Use up all that vacation time you’ve been saving up. And holy crap could we all use a mental health day right now. 

And that’s okay. It’s completely fine. Yeah, even if you take this really seriously.

Look, we’re heading into our seventh or eighth month of pandemic lockdown (depending on when you started), during a third surge which most likely is just the ongoing continuation of the first surge. We’re in the middle of a USelection that’s probably going to drag on for at least a month after it technically ends, and depending on how it ends things could be very not-good in the world for a while. And this weekend a perfectly good once-in-a-blue-moon (literally) Saturday Halloween is probably going to go to waste.

It’s completely understandable that you might not feel like typing out three or four hundred words right now. I know it’s been brutal on me, and I know I’ve been very lucky during all this. I’m self-employed and I spend 90-95% of my time at home when the world isn’t on fire. So this hasn’t been that disruptive for me and I’m still friggin’ stressed out worrying about my family and friends. Because there’s one or two good reasons to worry about… well, anybody. Everybody! I can barely imagine what it’s been like for those of you who are dealing with homeschooling kids or sick family members or who are at the end of your financial thread.

Well, I know exactly what that last one’s like, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

My point is, any decent boss would give you some time off if you were going through all this. Again, sick day. Personal day. Mental health day. They might even send you a card. 

Y’see Timmy, if the goal is to eventually be our own boss, then shouldn’t we all want to be a good boss? The kind we always wanted? The ones who actually made us like our jobs? Yeah, we need to keep on track, hit goals, try to get in a few hours a week… but we also want our employees (also us) to stay healthy. Physically and mentally.

So don’t beat yourself up if you need to take some time or maybe move a little slower right now. You’re not alone. In that, and in a lot of other things.

Thursday, the usual Halloween post. And then some more NaNoWriMo encouragements.

Until then, if you’ve up for it, go write.

But don’t worry if you’re not up for it.

April 2, 2020 / 4 Comments

A2Q Part Eight—The First Draft

And here we are once again. Or maybe we never left. Maybe we’ve been here all along, obsessively reading news articles and checking on friends in hotspots.

No? Just me? Really?

I find that hard to believe…

Anyway, it’s back to the A2Q, this rambly, sprawling series about how to write a book from bare-bones idea to finished manuscript. And it’s the day you’ve all been waiting for. We’re going to start writing. Finally! I mean, this is what the whole A2Q thing was supposed to be about, right? Writing a book. And yet, for some reason, we’re not getting to “writing the book” until part eight. EIGHT? What the freakin’ hell?

Hang on, though.

There’s a reason we took the long path. Well, I took the long path and just sort of led you along with little bread crumbs and Reece’s Pieces and maybe shots of whiskeys. Trust me, I lured you out this way for a reason.

Remember how I compared outlining to road trips? We can make a very loose, bare-bones plan or we can map out the whole thing and schedule every stop along the way. There’s plusses and minuses to both of these, but for the moment I want to flip this idea a bit and compare it to something else.

Have you ever needed to go somewhere you’ve never been before? Not wanted to go—needed to go? Maybe a doctor’s office or a job interview or a bar where that person is waiting for you and you really want to be there and make a good impression? And that place is… six or seven miles away? Maybe ten? Google gives two or three routes and it doesn’t seem quite sure where you’re going but you’ve memorized the names of a couple cross streets and maybe two stores that are supposedly nearby.

What’s that drive usually like? Overly-focused? Watching the clock a lot? Maybe a bit nerve-wracking because you thought you left early enough but you still haven’t found it and you’re watching the clock tick closer and closer to the time you’re supposed to be there and now you’re doing mental calculations about how far you think you’ve still got to go and find parking and… look, you know this feeling, right?

Compare that to the last time you drove to your significant other’s place. Or the grocery store. Or the mall. Did you think about street names? Did you even notice any of the stores along the way. No, of course not. It was familiar and easy and you barely thought about it at all. You just did it.

That’s why we’ve been talking about all this stuff up front. So you’ll have the characters and the setting and the plot and the story solidly in your mind. Heck, maybe you’ve got some bare-bones thoughts about theme. And because we talked about outlines and you moved things around a bit on paper—or even just in your head—you’ve got an idea how all these things fit together. Most importantly, you know what happens next. You’ve got an endpoint you’re aiming for, which means you can always keep going.

So, let’s get writing.

No, seriously. That’s it. Dive in. You’ve got the story in your head, so start writing.

Okay, fine. Here’s some more advice. Just because I like you.

First, dump any idea you have about art. Throw out all those books. Don’t even mention your muse. We’re not making excuses, we’re writing. The only way this happens is you pick up a pen or sit down at the keyboard. That’s the biggest thing. You just need  to do it.

Second, think of this a lot like NaNoWriMo, just without the time limit. If it takes you six weeks or three months or half a year to do this… so what? You work at your own pace. You’ve probably got other stuff going on in your life and sweet jeebus there’s a lot going on in the world. Right now you’re under no time limit and nobody’s expecting anything from you.

More importantly, just like NaNoWriMo, absolutely nobody’s going to see this. Seriously. It’s a first draft. It’s going to be messy, you’re going to change a bunch of stuff as you go, and it’s definitely going to need editing. So much editing. Don’t worry, we’ll be getting to that point soon enough.

If it makes this easier, I forbid you to show it to anyone. Just like that. Forbidden. It’s going to be awkward to explain to your friends, I know, but it’s a little bit of a relief, too, isn’t it? Now you don’t have to worry about it being perfect. You can just put a bunch of words down on the page. And then do it again the next day. And the day after that. Are they all the right words? Probably not. Good thing you’ve been forbidden from showing it to anybody.

Third, don’t judge your process off anybody else’s. Some people can do a first draft in weeks, some need a few months, but like I just said up above—none of them are you moving at your speed. Don’t worry that he turns out great first drafts or that she claims she doesn’t even do drafts(that’s usually a bit misleading anyway). This is your book. It’s just about you. I absolutely, hand-on-my-copy-of-On Writing swear your editor or readers will not care in the slightest how long you did or didn’t spend on this. Unless I tell them I wrote my six-hundred page masterpiece in a week, in which case… they’re going to go into it a little leery.

Fourth, because it bears repeating, please remember nobody’s going to see this. You can’t disappoint anyone. No one will know about those typos. That big plot hole is going to go unseen. You can’t even disappoint yourself. It’s all my fault. I forbade you from showing anyone, remember?

So for now, forward motion. Just get it done. We’ll clean up that other stuff next time. Honest.

Finally, have some fun with this. I know that might sound tough, but… you have to want to write this. You should be excited about writing it. As someone who’s been doing this full time for a while now… yeah, it can be rough and a grind and there are days (especially this past month) when it’s really hard to focus or feel like this isn’t frivolous somehow.

But even on the rough days, I’ve still got passion for it. I’m thinking of how cool this is going to be. When we started this thing, I jokingly came up with the idea of using a werewolf story to illustrate a lot of my points. But as we’ve been talking more and more about Phoebe and Luna and their family legacy and Luna’s curse… well, I started to get invested in it. I saw solid directions it could go in and even came up with a few little twists I liked and one big twist I really liked. To be honest, I’ve had a few developments I didn’t mention because now I’m thinking I want to write this as my next project (bumping my historical horror/weird western idea back yet again).

I’ve got nothing to back it up past my own gut, but I think readers can tell when the writer is bored. If I’m not enjoying writing it, they’re not going to enjoy reading it. My lack of energy for a character or a point of view or a sequence is going to be clear. Again, just my opinion, no hard research behind it, and there are always exceptions to the rule. But I really think it’s true.

So for now, just write. You’ve got the story in your head. Put it on the page “good enough” for now, we’ll make it better later.

Ready?

++++++++++
Chapter One
            “Luna!”
            Phoebe sifted through the laundry pile again, willing the black top to appear even though it hadn’t the last three times she’d looked. “Luna,” she bellowed again.
            Upstairs the sound of the shower finally stopped and she heard the thump of feet on the wooden floor. The bathroom door creaked open. “What?”
            “Where’s my black top? The one with the ribbing?”
            “I’m trying to get ready,” her little sister growled. “I’m going out!”
            “So am I! Where is it?”
            “How should I know?”
            “You borrowed it last night. You promised you’d wash it.”
            Silence. Then the bathroom door creaked quietly.
            “Luna!”
            What?” Her voice echoed in the small house.
            “Where is it?”
            A sigh echoed down the stairs. “I’ll get you a new one.”
            “You’ll what?”
            “I kind of… misplaced it.”
            “You what?”
            “I lost it, okay. I said I’ll get you a new one.”
            “Goddammit. I wanted it for tonight. It fits under my armor.” She looked at the leather sleeves, vest, and gorget piled on the bed. Her mom’s old armor. Stained dark brown with years of oil and sweat and blood that sank in before it could be cleaned off.
            “Wear the green one.”
            “It’s long-sleeved and I wore it last night. It stinks.”
            “It’s not like anyone’s going to complain.”
            Phoebe bit back a sigh of her own and marched over to the hamper of dirty clothes. “How did you ‘misplace’ it?”
            “I was at a party.”
            “That’s not an answer.”
            “Yes it is,” Luna sang down the stairs. “I’m getting back in the shower now.”
            “We’re going to talk about this later.”
            “Whatever.” The bathroom door creaked shut and hot water started to gush again.
            They’d have to talk about that too. The water bill and the gas bill had been high last month. Phoebe felt pretty sure Luna’s long showers were a major part of that.
            She pulled the green top from the hamper. It had been warm last night, especially under all the leather, and she’d sweated a lot. The top was still damp, and it reeked. But it was that or she could try to find a Henley or turtleneck that wouldn’t bunch up under the armor and slow her down.
            She sure as hell wasn’t going to be some B-movie cliché, hunting werewolves with nothing on but a leather vest.
           
++++++++++

That’s a rough, first-draft, off-the-top-of-my-head page and a half. It’s not great, I’m probably going to tweak the dialogue, and I already have some thoughts on word-choice. But the point was just to get it out.

I’m a big fan of exploring and learning stuff in a first draft. But I think a lot of people get caught up because they don’t have a good sense of their characters or the world, and they don’t know where they’re going. They’ve got too much to explore, and so a lot of their first draft gets eaten up dealing with… well, all that stuff we’ve been  going over for the past few weeks.

But when you’ve got enough of it in your head, you can just go.

Will it be perfect? Definitely not. But that’s okay, because we’re just doing a first draft.

So get to it.

Next time… should I keep going with the A2Q? Or should we take a break and I could talk about something else for a bit? Let me know what you’re thinking.

Until then… go write.

Write like nobody’s going to see it.

December 5, 2019

NaNoWriMo Aftermath

And now we rejoin our ranty writing blog, already in progress.
Hey, everyone. Thanks for sticking with me through the Black Friday stuff and the Cyber Monday stuff and then even more good book stuff on top of that. Hopefully it’s all helped you a little bit with the holidays.

I don’t know about you, but NaNoWriMo is still kinda fresh in my mind. With Thanksgiving right there at the very end of the month, it left me feeling like I’d been kinda cheated out of a week, y’know? More of a NaNoWriThreeWeeks.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t hit my word count goals for the month. By a long shot. I ended up hosting/moderating two Coffeehouses last month and the dystopian book club. Plus a day doing some promo stuff for an upcoming project. Plus my parents came out for Thanksgiving so, y’know, an extra level of cleaning and neatening. All in all… I think I lost close to two weeks. You probably needed to focus on some of them, too, right? I mean, I’m not the only one who had to do work stuffOr holiday stuff.

But I’m okay with it. I still got a lot done, even if not as much as I’d hoped. Also figured out a major narrative issue that’d been nagging at me for ages.

And that’s kinda what I wanted to talk about. Before the month started, I mentioned that “NaNoWriMo” is deceptive because we’re not really trying to write a novel in a month. We’re trying to write a first draft in a month. A rushed, hurried, often truncated first draft.

Thing is… even that’s a bit misleading. Because if the ultimate goal was to get an even slightly passable first draft this month, pretty much everybody would fail. I don’t know what the numbers are, but I’m willing to bet the majority of people who do NaNoWriMo don’t complete a draft. And I’ll go a little further out on this limb (and even hand you a saw) and say I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the folks who do finish have drafts that… well, let’s politely say they’re drafts need SO much work they’re effectively going to be rewriting the whole thing in their next draft. 

And hopefully they at least realize they need another draft.

So here’s my take for you. First, stop thinking about “winning” NaNoWriMo. This was a marathon, and most people don’t run marathons with the sole goal of winning them. Because if that’s my only goal, I’m going to be disappointed. A lot.

Most of us run marathons just to see if we can do them. The goal isn’t to be first—to win—it’s just to see if we can actually make it to the finish line. I don’t know about you, but I’d be friggin’ thrilled to finish a marathon, even if it took me three or four hours. Hell, if I could do a half marathon in that time I’d be kinda proud.

That said… point the second. What did I get done during NaNoWriMo? How much did I write? How many words got put down?

Y’see, Timmy, the real goal here is to see how many words I can write in a month. Because now I know how many words I can write in a month. Which means I can do it again this month. And next month? Hell, January’s clear sailing. No holidays, nothing to slow me down. Now I know exactly how long it’s going to take for me to finish that 90,000 word first draft. I have a solid, very attainable goal because I just showed myself how much I can write in a month.

So celebrate finishing NaNoWriMo. Even if you didn’t “win.” Because you won in the way that really matters.

Next time… I’d like to talk about writing as art.

Until then, go write.

And congrats again on NaNoWriMo.

October 31, 2019

Ultimate NaNoWriMo Tip

Hey! I know it’s the day of costumes and candy, scary movies and fun photos, and all that sort of stuff. Writing’s probably the last thing on your mind right now. Heck, it might be sometime Friday afternoon when you read this.

Which, oddly enough, is what I wanted to talk about real quick.

As some of you are probably aware, Friday’s also the first day of November, which means it’s the first day of National Novel Writing Month.  People sit down at their keyboard, scoop up a legal pad, put a new sheet of paper in their old vintage typewriter, jam that USB16 plug into the hexadecimal cerebral port behind your left ear, and try to get an entire novel written—start to finish—in just 30 days.
Are you one of said people? Maybe you have been in the past. Maybe this is your first time. It’s my first time. Yeah, I’m going to try to get my current work in progress finished this month. Granted, I’m about 25K into it already, but my hope is to hit at least 100K this month. Yeah, even with the parents coming out for Thanksgiving.

(this will also be my convenient excuse later)

Anyway, lots of people are tossing out NaNoWriMo tips right now and I wanted to offer my own good news/bad news advice for you. More of  a mindset thing. I know it helped me a lot when I finally figured it out.

The bad news is this isn’t going to be a book. Not even close. See, the name NaNoWriMo is kinda deceptive, because we’re not really going to be writing a novel this month. We’re writing the first draft of a novel. Just a first draft. And, as we’ve discussed here a few times, there’s a big difference between a first draft and a polished, completed manuscript. 

And really, we’re writing a rushed first draft.  It’s going to have plot holes and dropped threads and factual errors and punctuation mistakes and typos.  Sooooooo many typos.  Incredibly embarrassing ones. It absolutely will, trust me.  Having a finished first draft is a fantastic starting point, but it’s going to need a lot more work after December first. No question about it.
Very sorry if you had any great plans about this finding an agent before Christmas. I’ve actually heard stories about agents who… well, I shouldn’t say they dread the first weeks of December. Or that they all physically cringe when they see “NaNoWriMo” in the introductory paragraph of the cover letter. But I think it’s fair to say they go into these things with a few strong opinions already formed.

Now, the good news is… well, it’s a first draft. We can stop worrying if an agent or an editor is going to like it because they’re never going to see it.  This draft is just for us to do whatever we want with.  I shouldn’t spend a minute second-guessing what those other people will want to see.  They may see later drafts, sure, but what we’re doing right now? This is just a big bowl full of cake batter. It’s got potential, sure, and it’s kinda yummy as is, but the truth is this isn’t even halfway through the process. There’s so much more that needs to happen before it’s ready to serve to anyone.

So forget ‘em.  Right now we can crank up the music and let our imaginations run wild.  We can do whatever we want.  We can tell our story.  We can drop all expectations and inhibitions and just write. Feel free to mess up, to use the wrong word, to make drastic changes, to leave things blank or marked [FIX THIS LATER]. Don’t worry about critics or agents or book covers or any of that

Seriously. NaNoWriMo is about the first draft so be selfish. Make it all about you and what you want to do. This is, as the youths say, the “dance like nobody’s watching” part of the process, so dance your ass off.  Hemingway said write drunk, edit sober, and well… we shouldn’t be doing a lot of editing this month. Let your creativity off the leash, eat nothing but corn chips, drink nothing but whiskey, run naked in the park, and don’t worry about anyone else and what they may think.  Do what you want to do with this one.  Do anything, free of worry or expectation.  Because this is just a first draft.
Also, don’t actually run naked in the park. You’ll probably get arrested, and that’s going to eat up a big chunk of your writing time.  Plus it’ll end up on YouTube and let’s be honest… unless you’re in really good shape that’s not going to help your career, either.
Although these days, who knows. Dad bod is kinda in with some folks.

You know what? If running naked in the park is part of your process, go for it. You do you. Tell the police I said it was okay.

Anyway, that’s my big NaNoWriMo tip for you.

Next time, I’d like to talk about twists. Really, about what happens before them.

Until then, go write.

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