Wellish

Wellish

Okay, so I’m feeling a bit better, but not totally fantastic just yet. Even so I’ve still been writing, not as much as I would like and without the quality I would prefer, but I’m still getting the writing done. Luckily I was slightly ahead in my nano count so I’m still hanging in there.

The downside to all of this was I missed my Tuesday writing group, which is too bad because it’s a fun group. Still, it wasn’t worth the rink, one of the group has a compromised immune system, so staying away is for the best. I’m just glad the group organizer reminded me about it, otherwise I might have just wondered it like a fool.

I’m sick enough, I don’t need to be giving my cold to someone else who really doesn’t need it.

A bad time to feel bad

Gah, I’m coming down with a cold. The side effect of this is that my head is getting all fuzzy and it’s hard to actually get any writing done. I managed to scrap by with about 900 words, but that’s not really all that good. Thankful I’m reasonably ahead so I’m not losing ground, but still.

This is really not the time to end up with a head cold.

Keep plugging away

The problem with writing on a fixed schedule is that you don’t get much of a chance to skip things. Sometimes you just have site down to write even if you don’t feel up to it. It can suck, but it’s not all bad. While it’s true you keep the benefits of writing there are some extras that go with it.

One thing I’ve found is that, when I’m feeling bad enough to not want to write, just sitting down to write can help make me feel better. I like to write, and writing can cheer me up, though sometimes it takes a kick in the ass to get it done.

Ya, don’t do this yourself…

Okay, I’m being a bad Nano writer and I’m taking a day off. I know most people say you shouldn’t do that, you should just keep going on ahead and write every day, but I usually can’t do that. I normally schedule at least one day a week not to write simply because I need the break, this is all year around, not just during Nano.

I don’t feel too bad about doing it for two reasons: #1: I’m slightly ahead right now, and #2 I try to write two thousand words a day which gives me room to take the day off as needed. If you’re falling behind a break might not be the best idea, but sometimes you just need to relax a little and recharge.

Remember, writing should be fun. If you can’t enjoy it it’s time to go take a walk and enjoy something else for a bit.

Other side of the Coin

Sometimes it seems like half the work in writing comes in rewriting. It seems strange but it’s really true, more so if you let yourself just write on the first draft. Your rewrite is where you get a chance to bring things out and into focus.

The rewrite is also where you flesh out your plot and start to tighten it up. During the first draft you might have wondered around all over the place as you tried to discover things, but it’s time to cut out a lot of that. Or maybe you set up a plotline that you never took advantage of, that’s something else to remove.

It’s also where you start adding to your story, filling out the characters a bit more so they are more well rounded, work your foreshadowing in and maybe give your bad guy more screen time so you can really get an idea of why he’s doing what he’s doing.

If the first draft is where you discovered your story, the second draft is where you hone it down it a fine edge. The third draft is where you polish it up to a fine shine.

I'm doing it wrong

If you've done nano for a while one thing get's pretty well ingrained in your head. "Quantity, not Quality". The whole point is to just write 50,000 regardless how good they are.

Myself, I aim for Quality as well as Quantity. Which means I'm doing it wrong. :)

Week the second

Well, here we are in the second week of Nano for 2009. I’m sure I could provide a lot of advice and encouraging words, but if you’re doing Nano you have gotten a good share of them already. So, I’ll have to be short and to the point.

No matter how much it feels like your story sucks. This is not the time to give up. Yes, it’s the hardest time for your novel, but once you get past it things will get better. I’ve run into this feeling more times than I care to count, heck it’s killed a few novels of my own I wrote back in the day. It kicks in a third of the way through any book, it’s way it’s the 100 page curse (not that most books are 300 pages any more, but the name is older than today’s epic fantasy).

The trick is just to press on and keep going. Work through the wall, and it will be better on the other side.

As for me, I’m just a hair over 18,000 words so far and had a 5,000 word day on Saturday, which is very nice. It’s been a few years since I had that productive of a day.

Don’t ever stop

The real hard part about writing is that it’s sometimes hard to just keep going, more so when you’re about a third of the way through a novel. There’s a point where all the excitement is gone but the story still remains, and it becomes even more imposing then the blank page.

No matter how hard it is, you need to push through and keep going with it. If you stop and just let it sit until you know exactly what you need to do you may never get back to the story, or worse you’re gone so long that when you come back to the story you’ve lost the thread.

It’s hard to describe the frustration when you can’t remember how a story was supposed to go, and where you were going to take it. Once you lose that it’s almost impossible to get it back, and when you do it’s never the same anymore.

What you write may not be the best thing, and it may have to be thrown out, but remember it’s your first draft, it’s not going to be perfect. Just do what you need to do to keep writing the story, once you’re past it things will get a lot easier. The odds are, when you go back to look at it, you’ll find it’s better than you thought.

2009 Book Reviews #4

#16: The Secrets of Power Negotiating by Roger Dawson

This one is pretty self explanatory, I picked the book up because I suck at negotiating, if I had any ability I would have paid a few grand less for my car. Instead I just sort of nodded and didn’t even make an offer. Live and learn. So I picked this book up to try and learn how go about doing it better.

On the whole it was pretty well done. The writing was clear and simple, with good examples throughout the book. The author is good at getting his point across without too much trouble. Outside of that I can’t really add much, the book is worth a read if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

#17: Myth Directions by Robert Asprin

I’ve generally liked the myth series in the past, the thing is I rather like the later books in the series; the early ones are pretty week. This one, which is the third, is really starting to show the promise of the series, but isn’t quite hitting on all cylinders.

I think the real problem is that the humor in the book is fairly topical, whatever he was riffing on in this, outside of maybe the Surperbowl, isn’t really common knowledge anymore. Because of that the humor pretty much has faded. Oh, and somehow Avis really pissed him off as he goes out of his way to bash them.

The real problem with the book is that everything happens way to fast. Important plot points are brushed over with a casual comment then minor things are built up a bit too much. It leaves the book feeling very disjointed; the bits of the story are just stuck together without any real connection to each other.

#18: No Plot? No Problem! By Chris Baty

It’s been a long times since I read a book about writing, and with NaNoWriMo coming up (it was October when I read the book) it seemed like a good choice. The long and short of it is that Chris is the guy who started Nano and the book is all about writing a novel in a month.

As writing books go it’s not that bad, there’s a lot of good advice in here about how to write and how to get your first draft onto the page. Admittedly the book is geared around doing everything in a month, but there’s more then enough good advice here to apply to any writing endeavor.

The real lesson of the book is you just have to drop all the excuses and write. After that everything else is… well, everything else.

#19: Memory in Death by Nora Roberts writing as J. D. Robb

Another in the very long series of In Death novels, and I think this one is one of the better ones. The last dozen books have been ramping things up more and more, to the point the last book ended with some rather large set pieces. This one is a return to form and a smaller case.

In fact the murder doesn’t show up for the first 100 pages, instead we get to meet Eve’s first foster mother she had when was 8. The foster mother was rather cruel with her charges and has now show up to use Eve’s past to blackmail Roarke for a couple million dollars. Neither Eve nor Roarke are willing to pay, and are firm in that.

Naturally it’s the foster mother that was killed in this case. While there was a bit of a larger plot at work, it was nothing huge, and nothing that really had been planned to end in murder. In fact the murder turned out to be good old rage. It was a nice change from the last few books.

#20: Escape from Alcatraz by J. Campbell Bruce

This is another true crime book, well audio book, the subject of which is pretty much what you would expect given the title. The book doesn’t just cover the most famous escape, but all of them, and the overall history of Alcatraz from opening to closing.

As books go this was really interesting, there was a lot here I had never heard of before, like some of the rules that were in place when the prison first opened. On the whole the prison in the early days was bleak and highly controlled, that went away over time, but only to a point.

One thing that seems to run through all the eras of the prison was the arrogance of the people running it. Every time there was an escape attempt (including a couple that got vanished in the water) they were happy to announce they had fixed the security problems and the prison was now surely escape proof. The Morris escape was the final nail in the coffin, but there was still one last escape attempt in the prisons last months of operation.

I wouldn’t have minded a bit more coverage about the Indian occupation, but that’s really outside of the scope of the book.

It's my Birthday

Todays my Birthday, so I let myself relax and only wrote a little bit. I'm sure I'll have more interesting things to say tomorrow... maybe.

There are some things you need to do

When you’re writing, there are some things you need to do, some things that you must do if you want your story to be a story. You need to have a plot, characters, and a few other things, but the most important thing is not something you will see on may lists of story elements. Even so it’s one of the most important things you can do in your story.

That’s to finish it.

I can’t really state this enough, you need to finish your stories. If you never finish them then what sort of story are they really? You can’t edit it, not in any real way, you can’t proof it and you can’t improve it. An unfinished story is hardly a story at all.

One of my friends had this problem, though maybe a little different than you would expect. He seemed to never finish anything because he always had a newer, better idea, and he would run and start doing that instead. He is one of the most creative people I know, but he just can’t finish anything, and what’s worse is that he posts most of his stuff as he’s writing it, so all he has to his name is a trail of unfinished work, some of it very long.

If you want to be a writer you have to finish your stories, at least some of them, otherwise you’re only writing half a story. It’s the second most important thing you can do as a writer.

Time to run

So, today is the second day of Nano, and late enough that if you’re taking part, like I am, you should be well on your way into your novel. If you’re not, don’t worry, there’s a lot of time left in the month to catch up, but don’t wait too long.

As for me, I have a little over four thousand words written, nicely ahead of where I should be both the nano count and by my own count. It’s a good start, but then again the first week always seems to be easy.

Funny, this will be my seventh nano. You would think I would be used to it by now, but nope, I’m still struggling along the same as I do ever year. At least I’m past where I was last year, that one never got off the launch pad.

And here we go

Well, there is now slightly more than a day to go before NaNoWriMo 2009 starts. I’m looking forward to it this year. I think what I have planed (a rewrite of one of my scrap stories) should work out pretty well and turn out to be a good story.

I’ll probably be posting about how my Nano is going here on the writing blog, I mean it’s kind of what it’s for, but I’ll also try to keep up my usually run of useful advice. Hopefully it will come in handy for everyone during the month.

See you all in November!

Creeping closer

There are times when my crazy emotional state gets in the way of writing. Usually I end up either not writing at all or banging my head against the blank page… well, metaphorically speaking. My blank page is on the computer screen and I’m not going to hit my head against that!

Still, it’s hard to get over that sort of thing. Sometimes I just need to learn to sit back and relax a bit, maybe unwind before writing. Then grab it and kick it’s ass until the words are all out on the page. Or something like that, I’m not sure that really works.

Oh well, Going to be doing a lot of writing the next couple of days, and that’s before Nano starts. Funny that.

For the want of a name

Well, here we are, a Wednesday, and Nano is now only four more days away. It’s time to really sit down and start planning out how you’re going to write, and maybe even what you’re going to write.

Failing then, how about some character names? Surprisingly this sort of thing can be very hard depending on your setting. For a fairly modern day setting you can get away with something like a baby name book or even the phone book (I’ve used both) to find a name. For a fantasy or science fiction setting it can be harder.

With the normal fantasy setting a history book can help you find interesting names, take a couple lesser well know people from the are your emulating, mix of their names and you have what you need. Maybe you can even find ways to use existing names in a more traditional way. Many last names started as job titles, so keep that in mind when picking character names.

A piece of advice if you’re writing a science fiction story, please do not use an apostrophe in a character’s name. This is normally done to indicate that someone is an alien, but it’s both silly and cliche. Not to mention that there is no sound associated with an apostrophe, with the possible exception of phlegm. You want a name that can be pronounced without too much trouble, and might still look alien.

Names can also provide some glimpse into a character. There’s always the old school prophetic name, but that’s hard to pull off anymore. If you really want to give a hint about a character in their name do it in a different language, but not obviously so, that way people who know that language will think your clever.

You don’t have to have a name for you character when you start writing, but it does help. It’s hard to go through your story calling your hero “Hero”, it kill the flow. Even if it’s a temp name, come up with something.

One last piece of advice, try to keep your character names different for the first few levels. Having a Jason, John, James and Josh in your story might be fun, but I find it hard to tell them apart in the story. It’s really a personal thing, but if it helps the reader enjoy a story, why not.