Itchy fingers

It’s half past I should be asleep already and my head is buzzing. I've got itchy fingers and I think I recognise the symptoms well enough to know that if I don’t at least do a little writing today, then this anti-tiredness factor is going to drive me insane.

I have the an unformed craving to write something new; to put my fingers across the keyboard and see what comes out of this fey restless mood. I usually like what comes, even if I can’t use it immediately. Some of my best stories have come from that. This time… This time, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to go back to the story I’m writing and see what happens if I concentrate on that with this mood.

Whether it works or not is not important - the way I figure it, I’m going to win either way, because I’m doing more writing than I have in the last couple of days, and I’m doing it in the right place for the right reasons. Because putting the words down is more important than whether I get the feeling of being in the rhythm of things, I’m not going to tell you if I succeed in going into the writing zone. That’s not the important part. The important part is that I’m taking this half-insomnaic (may have made that word up too) state and done something useful with it for once.

If I’m not using the spare minutes I have during the day to write, I’ll take the  minutes I could be grabbing some gamma/alpha/whatever sleep cycles.

I need to write now.

Almost bursting

This post has been a little while in coming. When I first wrote it, the starting sentence was “It’s been a little while since since I've written anything on here.” That’s how long it’s been, way back in the tail end of December.

I generally hate looking back. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of personal or ‘professional’ progression in 6 months, a year, two years. However - and this is a biggie for me - I want to look back in six months time and see that I've finished a second book, and I want to count the number of short stories and know that there was real movement from point A to point here-I-am.

*opens the curtain*

It’s been a little while since since I've written anything on here.

There have been some good reasons for not having done so, but none of them are the main reason… one acceptable reason is that I spent so long in editing mode, and then in ‘putter along’ mode that it feels like a bit of a revival to get back into actual writing mode. This is the part where the fingers hit the keyboard, and something gets put down. It may not be the best (it really isn’t right now), but it’s something. I need something. I need to have the passage of these days count for something when I look back and only see the failures. It may not be a supreme amount of words (it isn’t that either), but I did some words yesterday, and I’m in the middle of doing some today, and I’m going to do some tomorrow. I can’t go further than that because consistency is still a problem. What I’ve decided is that yesterday and today is not a pattern. Tomorrow is an acceptable thing that I can commit to, and after that, we shall see. I know pretty much kinda what I’m going to write, even if it isn’t bursting into my brain like a full-blown thing.

That’s cool though, it’s enough for me to get to another stage, which is the first tiny beginnings of a habit. Three days does not make a writing chain. Three days makes a barely-statistical bump in the Quest For A Good Habit. But it’s a start. Sometimes that’s exactly what it’s all about. Starting something and working on it. Sometimes it’s keeping going and doing your best, because when all’s said and done, that’s all you can do. There’ll be hard days and bad days, weird days and frustrating days, and days where you seriously wonder why you’re doing this writing stuff in the first place. It’s days like that when you just have to remember that at one time, this was fun. The part you’re on, or the thing you’re working on may not be fun at the moment. So what? The fun will come back. You will at some point finish and put it away, or polish it and review and work on it, and something will happen. You’ll find you like what you have. The more you work on creating your habit, the more you do this writing regularly thing, the better you’ll get at it. Like anything else.

And like most things, if you keep working on it, you will get better. Fraction by impossibly small fraction, you will get better. I don’t just say it, I believe it. I have to. Otherwise, why else would I want to keep doing this all the time, and for all the time I have?

Go write some stuff. It’s fun. Then do it again. And again.

First times

I wrote this a while ago, I think back in last April. I never realised that this had never been posted. So I thought - why not? This was both an odd and a familiar feeling when I started to read, and hopefully it will be good for me to look back when I finish up. Have I gotten any better at doing this whole regular writing thing in a year? Maybe. I'll read this again and decide later.

In case you were wondering, my money is on that I have possibly wasted a lot of time that I could have been a little more productive. As I said, I'll read and have a think on it. We shall see.

Kick it

For the last month (and some), I've been trying to focus on a single story that I started some time ago. I've mentioned it more than once, because at first it was just another story to be finished at some point, and then it was because I was having real trouble trying to get back into it.

So I mapped the bigger sections out. I managed to break it down into chapters. I had a list of what, who, when, where, that sort of thing, but I made sure I left enough… ambiguity, leeway, blank parts in the story so it would still like I was making a story and not painting by numbers. I can’t think of a better way to kill a story than to have everything pre-thought out and half scripted. It kills the joy.

Which is an odd thing to say, because I wasn’t finding very much joy in being able to write this idiot story. I’d ended on a particular part, and couldn’t find an intelligent way to move forward. It didn’t flow. I think I’ve started this next chapter maybe twenty different times, and still no dice. It wasn’t working. Maybe I should have decided to do something different, like pick the story up from a different place and backfill later. Maybe I should have written the parts that came easier and slowly fill in the gaps/chapters at a later time.

I didn’t do that. I kept pushing, kept trying new things and generally tried to bull through. It’s just words, gosh-darn it, and they should go down in a form that I like and suits with the story.

Finally it happened. I sweated, swore, bullied, threatened and ordered a bunch of semi-coherent words to get down on the page, and by Freya’s pigtails, they came! I did a quick word count to see how much I actually managed to barf out. Six-hundred-and-some words! I know it isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but they were six hundred (and some) words that hadn’t been there for the last however-long.

It isn’t a big win when you consider the story is currently at 19k words and feels like it isn’t anywhere close to being done. But it is a big win for me. I’ll take it.

Short changed

I've been working on a couple of short stories recently, as it seems a good way to fail fast and try out new things. I don’t know if short stories are actually publishable, but they’re good practise, they’re a great challenge and they spark my imagination in a way that I know is time limited. Short stories get into the myriad ideas on your mind, and allow you to put them down on paper where they’re locked down for the time being and out of your brain.

Short stories also perform another function for me: they get me writing. I don’t need to do many of them, but sometimes they are a great way to get something off my chest if I have some emotion buzzing around, or if I’m not feeling in the mood. Most importantly right now, they seem to prime me. My fingers are typing, and my ‘writing brain’ gets switched on, or gets back in the groove and I can go back to my main story.

The idea, and it seems to work more often than not, is that I’m kind of jump-starting my fingers-on-keyboard mode. I’ll get to the typing and not worry about getting it right the first time, or a perfect start, or finding the best way to segue from where I've left something (chapter/page/line) to where I want it to go.

I’m also working on a book series at the moment… at least the planning of one. It’s in a type of genre that I’m not used to doing, but it feels like it’s going to be a fun project and I intend for it to be pretty much ebook only.

In fact it isn’t just in one new genre for me, it’s in two genre’s. Why? Because I've written short stories on those genre’s and I think it’ll be fun to mix to two of them. The story won’t be a comedy or a pastiche. I’m really going for broke on these. The funnest thing is that I want them to be relatively quick reads. I want them to be fun for the reader, and I want them to be in the 45-50k range. So yeah, I have some specifics.

At this point in time, there isn’t a lot of meat on the bones. Heck, there isn’t even a lot of bone on the frame. But the genre means that I have to start from the end of the story and work backward to make sure everything fits in. That’s a challenge I haven’t encountered before. I’m looking forward to understanding how the series fit together (loosely planned at 6 books), and then getting down to things and working out how the first book fits together.

This is a completely backward way for me. I usually start with a premise, or most often find myself writing what seems to be some part of the middle of the book and I keep going until I stop and need to figure things out. The ‘why’, ‘what’ ‘who’ and a lot of the time the ‘who’ question pops up. It isn’t a logical way to proceed either. I am aware of this. Sometimes I’ll start with an actual beginning which is quite nice.

But starting from the end? That’s weird. It’s another skill that I know will come in useful on my other stories, but right now its necessary. The series will be way too much work and stress to try to do it any other way. There are a couple of more firsts involved with this, including that this is the first thing that I’ll have written something purely for the ebook audience. If it somehow gets picked up by a publisher, then so much the better, but then again I may win the lottery. It’s probably along the same odds of probability. I’m cool with that.

This isn’t about worrying about finding an agent and shopping around and dealing with contracts. Heck, for a first time author, if I even get a $5000 dollar advance, it would be a minor miracle. I figure that if the book does halfway ok, I’ll be doing ok on the first book and better on the second, etc etc. Nobody jumps into book 3 without checking out books 1 and 2 first. And if they like book 1 enough, they’ll probably give the second book a chance. Hopefully I’ll have learned enough by book 2 that it’ll be a better story. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m not too worried. I still have to finish the story I’m working on, and then I have to leave it alone for a while to be able to come back to it with fresh eyes. The way I figure, the difference between the book I’m working on and the series I’m planning will be enough of a change to feel like something completely now.

It will be something completely new. It will be stretching my wings. It will be longer than a series of short stories, but it won’t be some big horrid saga stretching millions of pages. I’m not ready to go through that again. I need to get better with using fewer words.

And like the Cylons, I have a plan. The first three books will be written, edited, proof-read, covered and everything else before I put the first one up. I want the first draft of book four done and in the bag before I even consider talking about book one getting out there. If I can get the first three ready, and if book 1 takes off, and if by some type of improbable set of cosmic circumstances people notice it, buy it, and want to read more whilst telling their friends, then I need to be ready to serve them more. That’s the plan.

'Gotta long way to go.

Clean palate

Two things have happened recently.

My writing discipline (the part that makes me sit down and start typing) is starting to kick in a little. I’m not doing the writing on the thing that I want to be writing, but seeing as I've been so inconsistent recently and coupled with my new ‘write fast’ philosophy that I’m trying to try out, meant I’m trying to write more period. It may not be the thing I should be working on, but at least it means I’m doing something.

I've found a couple of places that provide writing prompts. They’re for short stories, which is a good thing, because it forces me to figure out a beginning, middle and end, and it absolutely means I have to write tight. I’m not great at that.

So this is good practise. It’s a way for me to get fingers on the keyboard and to start typing. The great news is that although I’m not looking for feedback in these things, one of the places I’m getting these prompts is reddit. I've not been a redditor (is that the write right word?) before so this is all new to me. The specific sub is reddit.com/r/writingprompts. If at any point you feel like you need a good cleansing of the palate, then I sincerely recommend popping in there, finding a good writing prompt and letting loose. There’s no reason why you have to post it up on Reddit if you don’t feel like it. but it’s nice to have it up there in any case.

I’m using this opportunity for quick spontaneous writing for another reason. I’ll be trying new things; for instance to write a scene with only dialogue, or to write from first person, or from third person limited, or with short choppy sentences, or to use long, descriptive styles. Anything other than what, or rather how I normally write. If I read a story that has captured me, but I can’t work out why, I’ll take a theme and try that. I’ll make up a story in a genre that I don’t normally write in, or even read, and see how it turns out. It’s all practise, but it’s also practise in forcing myself to make something, even if I’m not in the mood. Especially when I’m not in the mood.

I can’t recall where I saw these two sayings, but they go a little like “the difference between an amateur and a professional writer is that an amateur writes when they’re ready to do so, and a professional writes even when it’s the last thing they want to do”. The other saying is “If you want to be a professional writer, then look at it as a job.” When was the last time you didn’t go to work because you weren’t in the mood? You get up, you go to work, and you do your job.

Sometimes, most of the time, there are probably more fun and more interesting things you can think of to fill your time. But a job is a job. If I want to do this thing which is probably the funnest thing you can do with your clothes on (but if you need to get a little freer with the clothing situation then knock yourself out), then I need to keep doing it. That’s the only rule. I lose some of the ‘feel-like-it’ and gain some of the ‘this-is-what-I-do’.

Write more, write better, write faster.

Whilst I have no idea whether I am indeed accomplishing number two, and I have a plan for number three, I can definitely work on number one.

I am not a professional writer. I'm trying to act a little more like a professional, so one day I can look up and realise that there isn’t any difference. I am in no way trying to fake it until I make it, rather, keep doing it until I am it. I've heard for years that almost all writers have a second job. In that case, it means that these writers treat their hobby, their fun, their passion as a first job.

Granted, posting thoughts onto a blog, or onto an internet forum is not going to put food on the table, but in terms of learning how to be coherent, its a damned good place to start.

And it’s kind of refreshing too.

Just when

This is not the place or forum to talk about personal things, therefore I won't. What I will say is that no matter how much you intend for your personal life not to impede upon your professional one (and in this case I'm going to include this blog as professional. The biggest reason for that is that if I'm going to act like I'm a writer, then this has to be my job. I haven't done a great job about it, but I'm working on getting better a little bit at a time), there are times when things happen that are so darned big that they seem to drown out other things.

My day job has been like that. My personal life has been like that. I'm guessing that most anyone that has read more than one post can relate to it as well. The only thing I can say in times like this is that fair has nothing to do with what happens. Fair is what you tell your children and sometimes try to write about... and sometimes not.

Life, real life has never had much to do with fair. Real life is. That's what it does. It doesn't matter about points of view, or how much one has tried, or anything other than what is, and what people believe. When it comes to writing something, what is, is what you have put down on paper, packaged well, and let loose on the world. The question you have to ask yourself is "have I written something to the best of my ability, have I tried to package it to the best ability I have at the moment, and have I let it loose in the world?"

If you only have a limited time to do something, have you put in the passion and the care and the words that really mean something into it? What happens if you look back and realise you only had the one shot? What happens if you see this a day, or a post, or a publication later and you realise that you didn't actually take the risk and say what you felt, not just what you thought?

You are a writer. You are a writer because you want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer then practise. All the time. Send an email and say it in the best way to get not only the point, but also the feeling across. Do you care about what you're doing, what you're saying? Have you paused to think about what the person on the other side of the book, of the page, of that email will pick up? What is it you want from them?

Care. Mean it. Say something that matters, or in the very least, write something that you believe. If it's just a fact, then state it so it is non-refutable. If it is a feeling, then give of yourself to let them know. If it's a scene then believe in it, and therefore let them believe in it too. Share. If words have power, then they have the power of a surgeon and the power of a teacher and the power of an artist. They don't have to be perfect words, but if there isn't any substance to it, then at least let them have a point.

Fail fast

I’m going to try something new. More precisely, I’m going to try something that’s new to me, in the hopes it’ll prove worthwhile; it’s my version of Failing Fast.

I’m not a fast typer, I usually find myself reaching for the right word, or retyping a bit of sentence more than once because it’s not quite right. I read a bit, and then get to fiddling because I missed some things out, instead of marking it and moving on. I should have learned all these lessons some time before, as I’ve done NanoWriMo and the only way I could win was to keep pushing forward, and never look back.

Of course, I can also remember being in a coffee-guzzling, sleep-deprived, storyline-obsessed haze for most of the time as well. I remember coming out of it thinking that working at that pace and that regularity wasn’t sustainable. I also remember thinking “Oh my.” Fifty thousand words in 30 days. It was possible, I did it, and I still have no real idea how it happened.

So I’m going to try attacking stories with the same amount of devil-may-care attitude again. I’m going to try to get it down as quickly as possible and fix the problems after the fact. I’m going to try learning how to do significant rewrites, and I’m going to end up learning how to literally tear chunks out of a story. I’ve been writing short pieces of fiction recently to get myself into a habit, and then going back and chopping it down to an arbitrary amount. Hopefully that’ll stand me in good stead.

Part of the reason for doing the shorter stories it to see if I can concentrate on different things for a while. They say that practise makes – well, in my case, less sucky and prone to make idiot mistakes. We shall see. Let me see if I can get my ‘Concentrate and Commit’ rate up bit by bit. At least I’ll be typing something. Otherwise I’m going to admit defeat, leave the story I thought I’d be working on alone, and move on to the other one for a while. If I know me, just as I’m really getting into a groove, I’ll be inspired to go back.

Hey, as long as its typing and moving toward another finished something, I don’t much care right now.

I still don’t have a cover for the finished story. I got so far into having one done and then – life. It happens. And as long as I keep breathing, It’ll probably happen again.

The Wall

There’s a story I began a long time ago. I really liked this story. It details the beginning of a now pretty much dead genre called Cyberpunk. I wanted to know where the whole thing came from? How did the world end up as messed up and dystopian as your typical world? And more importantly, I wanted to tell the tale of people, because at the bottom, middle and top of every story, it’s usually about people. It’s what we’re interested in. Of course, the where, how and when is important. It frames the conversation, but if there’s no real who, then the whole thing is an exercise in world building a world without a population. That’s… not as fun to read as you may think. When’s the last time you read of a dead world without someone to witness it, or someone who will be affected in some way?

So I made it about some people. These people, these characters? They didn’t care about the birth of Cyberpunk. They wanted to stay alive, they wanted to make it. The bad guy was just doing something so logical, it wasn’t even bad to him. It was necessary. Appropriate. It had to be right in his (gender neutral usage) context.

So I have three main characters, all heroes in their own right. They’re interesting, and fun, and they all have their own hangups. The thing is, I don’t seem to be able to move the story on. I've been looking at this thing for the last two weeks wondering how to progress from here. I've been getting around it by getting the other projects up-to-date, finishing my short stories that I put up, and generally not stopping the whole writing thing, whether it be editing or something else. but I’m not writing. I’m not creating. I’m not doing the thing on the big story, the one that should be holding me tight. So again, I’m reaching out and trying to figure out how to do it.

Eventually I’m going to end up writing what’ll probably end up as pure crap for a bit, just to get into the swing of things. I don’t want to do that. Or maybe I’ll have to accept that this is the cost of starting a story and then leaving it for so long. Maybe there just isn’t any good way of getting into it, and the only way to go back to the story is not think about cutting it up, moving it around, peeking around plot points or fixing the characters or understanding motivation, or whatever I think may help in the end, but to put my fingers on the keys, type out whatever awful phrases or concepts are rattling around in my mind and just get it down.

I can’t go back to the phase I was in when I lost myself in the words and knew exactly what the next chapter or sentence was going to be like.

I guess that’s why the whole process of drafting and then redrafting exists. But I’m mightily tired of going to the same place and not knowing how to move it forward. You can’t fix something that hasn’t been written yet.

Which kind of brings me to my current dilemma: instead of doing what I’m telling myself to do, why am I still writing about doing the writing instead of actually doing the writing? Beats me. But if I knew all the answers, this blog would never have been born. I think it’s time to give this particular wall the death of a thousand keyboard cuts.

Annus horribills

It’s been a year. I’d love to say it’s been a great year, or a fantastic one, or even mention that it’s been an eventful one... in the sort of tone which means unexpected and yet wonderful things have happened. For me, it’s just been a year.

It wasn’t a good year. This blog will be a year and a day old. Go figure. Time keeps happening, whether we want it to or not. I've been doing a lot of looking in at myself and how long its taken me to get here. I've done a lot of soul searching in that time and found the place a little emptier and arid than I’d have expected. Or maybe not.

I finally got into the habit of writing, and then got out of it, and mostly just floundered around for a long time. Nowadays I accept that I’m kind of there, but more so than a year ago.

I wrote about people who were emotional, and over the top, and who were raw and real. I’m a writer, I made that stuff up all the time. When I finally take a quick look back over the year, I need to remember that somewhere in those last three hundred-sixty something days, I learned something. I need to remember that it wasn’t all loss. That there were also good times. There are always good times.

There were wins. If someone does come across this blog and gets to reading, then I’d like to make one request of you.

Whatever it is - the thing that you want to do, but have never tried to do it seriously - give it a shot. Just try. And then try again. And keep on trying. You’ll get better at it, and you’ll have found your happy.

Happy can be its own reward. Go find you some happy. If it’s something creative, even better, but that’s not important. Go for a walk. Watch a plane fly across the sky; heck, make imaginary shapes up in the clouds if that’s what does it for you, but do something. Actively get out there and get you some happy. It might not be perfect, but enjoy it for the intent at least as much as the thing itself.

Get your happy on. Do life.

Too Long

I suck at Tumblr.

I also suck at quite a few other things, but I've recently started using Tumblr to post up the book in chapters, and I just don’t get how to interact with the world of Tumblr. I also joined a writing community and am posting there for feedback about story, character, plot - actually I think I ticked every available box for someone to take a look at my story to let me know where the holes are. Unsurprisingly I haven’t had a huge amount of feedback. It’s probably like the exact amount of feedback I’ll be getting from agents (have I mentioned I’m putting together a database/list/spreadsheet of agents that I’m querying to?) and publishers and from people at large if I do end up putting the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or wherever fine ebooks are sold.

In short, although I haven’t updated this recently, I've been not lazy. I’m still trying. I’m still not writing every day, but I am trying to do something most days. The reason I mention is is because I’m feeling a little bit defensive. I wanted to put a new post up every month, just to show myself, if no one else that I can actually do stuff, and that I have been doing stuff.

I’m not the only person in the world who says “I can write a book.” I’m just one of the people who decided to get up and start. And then grind through it. And then keep going. And that’s all it takes really. I didn’t need to be amazing, or gifted, or have the most fantastic, unique and spell-binding story to tell (but of course I hope so. Everybody should hope their story is the dog’s whiskers in their heart of hearts), I just needed to be the one to do it. And keep going.

Its now almost a year since I started to get really serious and explore new avenues to prove it could be done. To prove to myself and anyone else that it isn’t impossible. In that time, I’ve learned so much, found a person at work who is an insanely competent line editor and been endlessly surprised by a close friend of mine who’s been with me every step of the way from down to up and all the way around.

I took a look at some of the short stories that I've either written or mostly written (story of my life, but you get the idea), and I've polished them a bit. I've put two up online in a kind of serialised format to see what other people think, and you know the most important thing I've learned from all of it?

Mostly, it’s that people don’t care. That’s a liberating realisation. It means that I can learn, and make mistakes, and keep trying. It means that I can keep getting better, and failing, all the way up until I don’t fail. I can connect to people and they’ll actually be interested in what I’m doing because they’re a self-selecting audience. I may not be earning money from this, but I will be learning a whole heap of stuff which will stand me in good stead. I’m doing the equivalent of paying my dues. I’m putting out a tester for people to see. I’m practising. And nobody cares. People tend to not focus on failures, but they sure as heck like to see successes. I don’t need to advertise my name - but I do need to start advertising my content. So I’m working on creating more.

The second part to this is understanding how to present myself and my work. It’s about finding that balance between being alone long enough to knock a few words out and finding, establishing or joining in a community that does care. That’s what Tumblr is for so many people. In an effort to describe it to people, I've called it Facebook for pictures, but it isn’t. It’s so much more than that. There is a large part of the site which revolves around pictures though, and about sharing, but whilst this is an inspirational and uplifting thing at times, the flip side of it is that when you’re someone like me who has the visually artistic ability and acumen of a dying amoeba in one of the lower parts of the Atlantic Ocean, it becomes a bit of a challenge. I can’t talk in pictures or gifs if the sale of a story depended on it.

Added to the fact that the UI is simple and easy to use, and we have a problem. Granted the UI is simple and easy to use, but I cannot wrap my head around it. Every time I think I've got it nailed, I learn something else. I think I understand queueing, haven’t quite worked out drafting (come on, how hard can that be? What’s wrong with me?) or scheduling… Am I over-complicating things? Why can’t I repost a picture from someone else’s site when I did the exact thing not five minutes ago? Have I completely lost the ability to learn new tech?

Right now, at the point I’m writing this, I suck at Tumblr. I’ll have to get better because I can see in it a community that cares, and somewhere where I’ll get honest feedback. It may not be pleasant to hear, but I get the feeling that it’ll be constructive for the most part. It has been purely positive so far, and that’s phenomenal. At the point in writing this, I've been terrible at keeping this blog updated. Right now, I think I should have been much further along in getting my last story out of the door, and I most definitely should have been working a whole heap more on my second story.