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.