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How Pinterest and Process Saved My Novel (And Can Save Yours, Too)
Writing a book, as the old adage goes, isn’t the hard part. I mean, yeah, it’s hard. It’s a butt-ton of work. For me, writing books isn’t the hard part. It’s something I do, more or less, whether or not I want to. But while the writing part isn’t exactly a mystery to me, there have been some real challenges over the past few years that have challenged everything I thought about writing. First thing? In 2008/2009, I was learning to write novels. Like, write them and finish them. I wrote a lot between 08-10, until my hands gave out. Yup, literally my hands stopped allowing me to write, and…
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Being as Good as My Word: On Getting Distance from Writing
Writers. We’re a funny bunch. I fully believe that in order to cope with the general stress and chaos of having many worlds and stories and people in our heads, we impose odd deadlines and limitations on ourselves. We don’t always share these with the masses, and some of them are downright personal. But it helps us make sense of all the fractal patterns spinning around us on a daily basis. Because otherwise I’m pretty sure we’d never get anything done. I do this quite frequently. And after the nine months of writing drought that came during pregnancy, I wrote a little book called Rock Revival about a fictional rock band.…
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World keeps turning, words keep churning…
I have not been a good blogger. But then again, I haven’t written much fiction. There have been lots of articles in the week, true, over at GeekMom and Geeks Are Sexy and whatnot. But the last month–in fact, all of February, which is an historically cruddy month as it is–was horrible. Horrible really doesn’t begin to express, really. My family suffered the loss of an amazing friend, a young man who grew up with my sister and me (and was indeed, her best friend in the world). I met him when he was 10, and had to see him leave at 29. A freak infection that took his life…
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blog, editing, fantasy, fiction, nanowrimo, pilgrim of the sky, poetry, watcher of the skies, WIP, writing
Watcher of the Skies and Thoughts on NaNoWriMo
So, my last post really did make it sound like I wasn’t doing NaNoWriMo, mostly likely. And apparently that’s the thing that got me going. Or something. I’m not going to try and explain it in too much details, but it goes something like this. I screwed up my back. I had to take medicine. I found out my kid does, in fact, have Asperger’s. My brain was mushy, I was in need of escape in the form of writing therapy that wasn’t going to require much editing (see: medicine), and my best friend Karen started talking to me about Joss Raddick. Readers of Pilgrim of the Sky know Mr.…
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Titles, Tentacles, and Trust
Explosition: in a narrative, the presence of excessive exposition. i.e. expository barf Well, 80K has been surpassed. This is good. This is very good. And as I plunge into the last few chapters, I’m realizing I do have more to say in this space. So I’m thinking the draft will be around 95K now… give or take. I have a tentative new title: Mother’s Ink. Or Inkwell. It’s become the center of the story, really (ink that is), and has even lent itself to my own version of the undead. (This is momentous! I’ve never had the undead in a novel before. I feel like I might have leveled as…
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This is the last time.
Writing has been slow since my birthday when, as a promise to myself, I scaled that 60K mark. Huzzah! But yeah, that was on the 14th of June, and here we are more than a week later and just cresting 62K. I have excuses, but really I don’t. It should be more. Anyway, I did add that other POV in, and I’m enjoying her presence immensely. It’s helping to tie some of the plot loose ends a little more tightly together and giving a bit of needed comic relief. She’s a clever one, that Dinah Montpre, but she’s also selfish and self-centered. It’s quite the combination. She also has virtually…
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You’ve got a messed up conception of happy.
More writing has been done, and I eked over the 30K mark this afternoon. This is good.( I apologize if some of these posts are a little repetitive, but currently I’m trying to track my output and want to be a little more book-centric during the process.) Stuff accomplished in Ardesia, where it’s spring and it’s still snowing, bombs have been falling, knights have been descending from airships and Marna is searching for Dev while Sievert searches for Marna, while Dev is traversing the seven hells, etc., ad nauseum: Almost killed someone, which I totally did not plan to have happen. Out of nowhere. Almost dead–not really dead yet–but now…
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Movin’ right along… footloose and fancy free…
Finally had a chance to do a little bit of writing today. The weekend was horrible, and writing was not an option. I had an epically bad reaction to medication on Saturday (I am a lightweight of unparalleled proportions) and was in no shape to be writing. I mean, I do have a drug addict in the book, and maybe (just maybe) I could have mustered something insightful or interesting. But honestly, just looking at the computer made me feel ill. So, none of that. However, progress is continuing. Not a huge day for output, but just under 4K for the day and I’m not complaining at all. I had…
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Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Things have been a little toward the crappy side lately, and while I’m not going to get into the details, one of the most pressing and irritating issues is that I’ve got some pretty severe carpal tunnel going on. I’ve had to resort to using dorky looking braces, taking lots of Aleve, and not typing. The not typing thing is particularly maddening since, well, writing’s what I do (not to mention what I get paid for). To add insult to injury (literally!) since I’ve been stressed out a bit lately, my brain’s first response is to be all OMG HERE’S 20 IDEAS FOR NOVELS YOU MUST WRITE THEM DOWN NOW.…
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“Be patient, keep writing” and other things I tell myself.
Last night I finished chapter 20 of Peter of Windbourne, and am now approaching the part in the book in which a series of Very Bad Things happen. The draft is sitting at 101,122 words at this moment, with hopefully no more than five or six chapters remaining (generally my chapters hover between 4-5K). It’s a blind rewrite, as I’ve mentioned, so I’m giving myself some extra wiggle room. I know it’ll be edited down a bit next. I’ve got until November to get it done, because I’ve promised to do NaNoWriMo again this year. This chapter has been particularly difficult, mostly due to the influx of freelance work that’s…
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Nothing to see here, move right along.
Yeah, haven’t been posting much. I just have this thing, see, where I like to be interesting when I post, and honestly, I don’t have a lot of interesting stuff to say at this particular juncture. I’ve started and stopped a handful of posts, and they all just feel rife with ‘eh’ to me. Having been blogging about writing for the better part of 18 months or so, I fear I’m repeating myself occasionally… I sincerely don’t mean for this to sound whiny. It’s not. It’s just sometimes, I think, people get quiet for a bit. I’m trying to focus on writing Peter of Windbourne right now, and even I…
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Writing to reach you
I’ve been in a writing zone lately. Every day, writing. In the car, in the house, upstairs and downstairs. It doesn’t seem to matter. As I’ve mentioned over at the Aldersgate Cycle blog, I’ve been so busy that blog writing isn’t really a possibility (except um, obviously right now). I realized I’ve clocked about 70K in the last month and three days. Which is impressive. But what really got me is that I’ve written 35K in the last ten days. Though I’m typically very, um, unpredictable when it comes to writing, I have little in the way of explanation for this one. To my knowledge no one has spiked my…
