Category: process

Well, my careful plan for a biweekly ranty blog has fallen apart. As plans always do. Best we can do is move on and try to get things back on track. And by we, I mean me. I’m not expecting you to do any of this for me…

Anyway…

Three or four weeks back I got a newsletter reply (you’re subscribed to the newsletter, yes?) asking about working on multiple projects. Did I tend to do one thing at a time or juggle a few things at once? And if I was a crusty juggler… how did I keep things straight?

This was kind of timely because when I got this question, I’d been working on this draft of TOS but just gotten an email from a magazine editor with suggested edits for a story I wrote back in… May? And I also got an email from Blackstone about some work we need to do on God’s Junk Drawer. Plus there’s this ranty blog and the newsletter. So this past month has had me working on a few different things.

So, yeah, I’m juggling stuff right now. But I think a key thing to remember, for this little discussion, is that I have to. No options. Writing is my full time job, and that means I’ve usually got two or three things at different stages

Now, left to my own devices, I usually just focus on one thing. I’m not against scribbling a few notes or thoughts for potential projects, but I rarely go that far with it. That’s just kind of my process. Also, mental note, haven’t really discussed my process here in a while. Let’s put that on the calendar.

That said… the magazine story was a dream project I’ve wanted to do for many, many years (for a few different reasons) so I couldn’t really pass it up. And I’m under contract with Blackstone, so no putting off those edits. And my agent’s waiting for TOS because… well, it’s the next thing. That’s how the job goes. I write stuff, he finds someone who wants to buy it.

So how do I juggle multiple projects?

Honestly, I’m not really sure.

I think, on a very real level, it’s a lot like any other job. Yeah, right now I’m trying to do payroll but somebody just walked in with a petty cash problem. I’m framing walls but right now we need all hands to unload a truck. I’ve been trying to get the warehouse organized but tomorrow’s the big spring cleaning day out in the store. We all do this, all the time. We’re working on one thing. We need to switch gears for a while. And then we go back to what we were doing before.

Granted, it can be a little tougher in the arts. For me, personally, going from one project to something completely different just means I need to get my head into the story, probably like how an actor (I’m guessing) sometimes needs to get into a role. I don’t need to call on my inner muse or anything, but I usually re-read some of my manuscript and maybe go over my notes. Bigger projects will probably take a little more reading and have more notes (novels vs short stories, for example) but doing that’s usually enough for me to remember what I was thinking and where/how I wanted things to go.

Of course, there are some writers who can flip back and forth with no problem at all. And some who may need a lot more work and effort to get back into something they’d set down. And some who are very much working on one project only and that’s it, from first word to publication. It’s very much an individual thing, and I can’t tell you what kind of writer you are. It’s one of those aspects of writing you’ll just have to play around with and figure out what works best for you.

I think my best tip would be, when I stop working on Thing One, I should be sure to use any of the tricks I’d normally use to make starting the next day easier. Get at least two or three sentences onto the next page. Make an all-caps note to myself right there in the manuscript. Don’t assume I’ll remember anything later—jot it down so it’s definitely there when I come back to it. Plot point, line of dialogue, song in my head, whatever. And if I’m only going to work for a while on Thing Two before going back to Thing One… well, do the same for it.

That’s kind all I’ve got for you there.

Not a super-satisfying answer, I know. Sorry.

But let me spin this another way.

If I wasn’t doing this full time—let’s say it’s the career I’m trying to jumpstart or maybe just something I’m having fun with on the side—I guess a better question might be why am I working on multiple projects at once?

I used to have a lot of different things I was working on. For all sorts of reasons. Shiny new ideas. Trends I’d try to follow. Different formats I was writing in. Fear I was working on the wrong thing and I should spend more time on something like that.

But eventually I realized I was jumping around so much I wasn’t actually finishing anything. Sometimes this was deliberate, yeah. A story idea was going nowhere, so I just moved on to something new.

Other times, though, it was just lack of focus. The minute something needed some actual effort—some serious thought about structure or tension or character motivations—well, that’s when I’d decide to slide over to something else. Keep lots of projects going, right? If this one stalls just move on to that one. Or that one. And then that one. And this one. And oh, y’know what I just thought of…

Y’see, Timmy, while I’m not against working on multiple projects, I know for me, at that point in my career, it became more of a way to sort of dodge really committing to anything, if you know what I mean. And said career moved forward considerably once I focused on one thing and actually, y’know, finished it.

Is that where you’re at? Only you know the answer to that one. But it’s something I might consider when looking at those three or four or fifteen different projects on the desktop.

Next time… well, I’m hoping to get caught up on my reading.

Until then, go write.

So, a few times here on the ranty writing blog I’ve talked about diminishing returns. The idea the more you read and study about a topic—say, writing—the less you’re likely to get out of it. F’r example…

Most of us start of by picking up a few books on writing or maybe taking a creative writing course in high school or college. Depending on where you live or what you’ve got for resources, maybe you attended a conference or convention where you got to listen to writers, editors, and agents talk about writing. I know I did.

Eventually, though, we need to stop with the books and classes and online seminars because we hit a point where the information just starts to repeat. We’re just hearing the same things over and over again. Yeah, sure, maybe someone might put a new spin on this or give a better example of that, but was it really worth the fifteen-to-one hundred-ninety dollars I paid to learn it? Or the time I put into reading/ attending it?

But since it’s the start of the year, I wanted to talk about another kind of diminishing return. And this one’s a little more personal. For each of us.

Sooner or later, we all develop a certain approach to writing that works for us. A process, if you will. Everyone’s process is unique. I tend to work at my desk, but maybe you work best at a coffee shop on your tablet, and she writes best on her phone, and he (to fall back on an old example) does all his best work with dictation software while wearing that ren faire corset. Whatever it is, we’ve tried a few things—maybe a lot of things—and figured out what lets us get the most literary bang for our writing buck. And that whole metaphor fell apart but you see where I was going with it.

For some folks, these habits and methods we’ve accumulated work great and continue to work great. Project after project, we know we can do A-B-C-D and get a great manuscript. So naturally, we keep doing it.

But sometimes, for any number of reasons, my process begins to be less efficient. It doesn’t give me the same results as fast. Or maybe it goes just as fast, but the quality has slipped a lot. Maybe time and quality are both the same but it feels like it’s taking a lot more effort. Our returns, one might say, are diminishing.

And yet… we stick to it. Because this is our process. We found it. It works for us, right?

Right?

I was lucky that very early on in my writing process I had a mentor/ professor who emphasized not getting pinned down to one thing. Most of the time our class would be in our assigned room but sometimes, just for the heck of it, he’d have us all move to another room. A virtually identical room, yeah, but oddly enough we’d all end up in different seats, next to different people, sometimes facing a new direction just because of how that room was set up. When it got warmer he had us meet outside by a big tree once. One time (after making sure we were all old enough) he took us to the professor’s lounge at the top of the campus hotel and bought the class a round while we talked about the latest round of stories and writing.

I didn’t like using outlines for a long time. I had bad results with them, so my book-writing process was much more free-form. But eventually I decided I needed to get better with them and have a lot more things figured out ahead of time, because my career was taking off and I needed to be able to talk with my agent and editors about books I hadn’t written yet.

I also tend to write here in my office at my desk. I know the setup. I know my surroundings. Some people (like my beloved) might call it cluttered, but I find it so comfortable and familiar I can easily focus past all of it. And yet sometimes I still do other things. About 2/3 of the first draft of Paradox Bound was written on legal pads in a coffee shop back in LA. At the moment I’m about 60K into a new project (TOS, if you’re subscribed to the newsletter) and that’s also mostly written on legal pads, too, sitting out on the back deck. Because it just worked better.

So here’s your New Year’s nudge. Take a long, hard look at your process. Has it diminished? Is it still working as well as it used to? Does it give you the results you want?

If it isn’t… change it. Try something new. Do something different.

This is a scary idea, I know. The worry that I might try something new and that might not work, either. And now I’ve wasted more of my precious writing time smacking my head with legal pads or drinking overpriced coffee or strapping myself into this goddamn corset that wasn’t even the color I wanted! Trying something new feels risky.

Yeah. It is. Art is risky

Y’see, Timmy, we’ve got to take some risks now and then if we want to improve, and sometimes that means accepting we should try doing things differently. So be open to new ideas. Be open to the idea that you might need to be open to new ideas.

Next time… maybe I’ll talk about a few other things we should accept.

Until then, go write.

Welcome to the far-flung future of… 2024!

Anyway, I often start off the year with a little post about why I do this. How the ranty blog got started. What I tend to blather on about. Sort of like that first lecture in most college classes—here’s what we’re doing for the next six months.

But let’s flip it around

Why are you here? What are you reading this for? What do you hope to get out of this?

Are you just here because you like my books and you’re looking for fun facts or advance news about upcoming projects? Nothing wrong with that. You can get a lot of that out of the more-or-less-monthly newsletter. You can sign up to get it delivered right to your inbox or just wait for it to show up here on the ranty blog at the end of the month

Are you curious about my process? Maybe you want to know how I came up with that character or some insight into why I set things up like this. Also a valid reason to be reading. It does come up here now and then, usually as an example. Hell, there’s a few dozen posts here that reference my first finished novel– The Suffering Map – and what a cautionary tale it turned out to be.

Are you thinking about writing something yourself? Maybe you’re already in the process of writing something? Heck, maybe you’ve completed something? Good on you. Whichever, maybe you’ve ended up here looking for the next step. Could be one of the very first steps. Could be one of the last ones. Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle and you need a helping hand or a little nudge or a firm kick in the butt.

Honestly, you’re the folks this is mostly for. I blather on about a few different things here, but mostly I’m just trying to make the kind of resource I wish I’d had access to back in the day. One place where I could just type in, f’r example, “structure” and find a bunch of explanations and examples. And maybe not have someone basically say “wow, you’re doing everything wrong” the whole time.

Or maybe… you’re here looking for the secret word? The word that makes writing a novel easy? The word that gets you an agent and a publishing contract and your first hardcover? That word is mellonballer!! Seriously! Drop it into an opening paragraph, a cover letter, a casual DM with an editor and behold! Champagne will fall from the heavens. Doors will open. Velvet ropes will part.

No, of course they won’t. I think (I hope?) all of us here know there’s no secret word that makes some part of this easier. No magic phrase. No trick. A very large percentage of getting to do this as a career (if that’s what you want) is just doing the work. Not finding a clever way to get around doing the work.

So if that’s what you’re here for… sorry.

Anyway… I guess that tells you a little bit about what I’m doing here after all. Drop a comment down below, say hi, and let me know why you’re here.

And since we’re talking about the start of the year, next time I’d like to talk to you about your resolutions.

Until then, go write.

Spooky season is among us! Ghosts! Vampires! Nightmares! Panic!—no wait, we’re talking about NaNoWriMo this time.

Or are we?!?

Hopefully you’re not really panicking about NaNoWriMo. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s a bragging rights contest, something to make us focus on actually doing this for thirty days rather than saying “someday I’ll write it all down” for another month.

Wait, does everyone know what I’m talking about? In case you’re new to the ranty writing blog, we’re talking about National Novel Writing Month (Na-No-Wri-Mo). It’s a completely free, no strings, no requirements writing contest where you try to write, well, a whole novel in a month. Really, as much of the first draft of a novel as possible. There’s also no prizes, no trophies, no real prestige. As I mentioned above, I basically just get to say I did it. To someone else and to myself. Most importantly, to myself.

There’s a good chance this sounds a little intimidating. Don’t let it be. This is the writing equivalent of a fun run. It’s got a starting date and a goal, but past that it’s just you. Whatever pace you want to go at, however far you want to go with it. No pressure at all.

In fact, here a tip for you. Use that knowledge. Focus on it. Don’t worry about anyone else. Don’t think about your friends or the people in your writing group or that guy on Twitter bragging about his daily word count. Don’t consider what a future agent or editor might want. Toss all of that away. Forget all of it. Take a deep breath. Breathe in. Breathe out.

And now just write.

Seriously. Just write. Nothing else. For the next thirty days, forward motion only. No re-reading. No editing. No corrections at all. Don’t look back. Under no circumstances hit the up arrow or page up or push the scroll bar. None of that. Not even to go up to the last paragraph. We’re moving in one direction and we don’t stop moving in that direction. Making myself to only go forward means I’m making myself write. I’m not spending time rethinking yesterday’s work or tweaking that first encounter or double checking my spelling. I’m just writing.

And, yeah, this means things are going to be a little… well, very messy. Lots of typos. Dangling plot threads. Characters who suddenly change names/ hair color/ genders halfway through. Or are just suddenly dead because they really should’ve died back at the bank ambush and I’m only realizing that now and we’re only moving forward, right?

And that’s totally fine. Seriously. Remember, NaNoWriMo is just a first draft. It’s not going to be the thing we sell or the thing that gets us an agent. It’s the thing that’ll need some more time and some more work. Because a month isn’t that much time. Really. Even for pros.

Like I mentioned above, the goal here is to get as much work done on a first draft as possible. And first drafts are almost always messy things. In fact, I became a much more productive writer once I accepted that first drafts were messy things. It freed me up to and let me focus on getting things down on the page rather than getting them perfect the first time.

And getting things down on the page is what NaNoWriMo is all about.

So, as I often say… go write.

No, wait. A few other things before we all get on with the writing.

First, if you happen to be in the SoCal area and have a lot of free time at the end of the month, I’m going to be at SDCC Special Edition over Thanksgiving weekend. Sunday, to be exact. I’m doing the con edition of the Writers Coffeehouse, talking about writing, publishing, the state of the industry, and whatever other questions you might have. No idea what size crowd to expect, so we’ll see what happens there.

Also, I may be taking a little bit of a break here for a week or three. I’m feeling a touch overworked/stressed with said con, the holidays, the new book, and, y’know, the world in general. So I just want to take some pressure off and try to get to a place where I feel a little more caught up on things. Plus, to be honest, I feel like I’m just rehashing a lot of stuff here, and I’d love to be able to give you something new and, y’know, actually useful.

Anyway, that’s where things are at. Now fuel up on some Halloween candy and go wild with NaNoWriMo.

Now go write.