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.

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.

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.

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.

Do what?

A family member just asked what was going to happen once this story is finished. There has to be a point when you're done, right? So what happens next?

That one had me stumped. This is a purely personal view, but stories were meant to be read, or told, or even sung, but definitely shared in one way or another. That's how you're supposed to be able to tell if they're any good, and whether more stories should be let loose into the world. This one... This one just needed to be written and done with, but there's no aim - should it be shopped around for a traditional publisher, should it be posted up on a blog somewhere for free to be used as advertising? Is it good enough for that? Should it just go straight to ebook, or have a chat with the Amazon publishing imprint?

They're all good questions. The story is aiming for a particular market, so there's a start, however right now, I just don't care. It doesn't matter at this stage because no matter how the story is going to end up coming into real life for people to read, its not there yet. Until it is done, reread, checked and signed off on mentally, it can't actually go anywhere yet.

Who wants to read a half-finished anything? So yeah, the question will ultimately need an answer, because that will provide a direction of where it goes once it has actually been finished. That answer doesn't need to be given now.

I've done two revisions, and I think I'm going to either deal with one plot that isn't so much as dangling as needing a quick darn with a needle and thread resolution... and when I say quick, naturally the alternative wording is something like long and torturous. Everything seems to be linked to everything else somehow, so unpicking it is proving a real... ache. I'm learning. And I just need to keep in mind that it doesn't matter. I can just keep going and learning all the time.

I'm not done yet. And oh yes. This monster has grown to 85 000 words. For a young adult book. I'll also need to learn how to chop that sucker down somewhat drastically. At least 10%, but probably more like 15. When I'm done? I may never be done.

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