Category Archives: Author’s Perspective

Writing With A Full Plate

Business Choice Craft & Skills Day Jobs First Drafts Ideas & Plotting Nathan Barra Starting a Career The Writing Life The Writing Process Work-Life Balance Your Writing Career No Comments

I have always felt that National Novel Writing Month was scheduled during one of the most inconvenient times of the year. Many of us in the United States have significant travel plans and social commitments for the Thanksgiving holiday. College students are working on end of term projects and preparing for final exams. People with full time jobs are feeling the push to meet year-end financial goals, working extra hours to close out projects, and getting ready for the next financial year. To top it all off, Christmas looms just on the horizon. With all the commitments pulling at our time and attention in the month of November, keeping up a consistent work count is hard. But maybe that’s perfect after all.

You see, we can’t just be able to write when things are easy, when our writing space is clean, organized, quiet, and perfect, our beverage of choice is at our elbow, and we have neither a care nor a commitment in the world. If I waited for those moments to put my butt in the chair and fingers on the keyboard, I’d get 10 pages done a year max. Especially for those us trying to break into the business, there is constant distraction, ever growing commitments, and a million and a half other things that need doing right the hell now. For people like me, writing isn’t about quiet afternoons and hot cups of tea. It is about carving moments out of the chaos to make the dream work.

Having NaNoWriMo during one of the most socially active months of the year teaches us to manage our writing while still honoring those commitments. Writing can be all consuming if you let it. I’ve met more than one aspiring or published author who bemoans driving away spouses, losing touch with friends and siblings, or missing parts of their children’s lives because of the muse. I never fully realized the toll that writing takes on those we love until I saw how worn out and lonely my girlfriend was after my first NaNo success. I’m going to find a way to be a prolific author AND give those I love the time and attention they deserve. I can’t give you any advice on this one, as I’m still working on the balance myself. All I can tell you is that I, like many of you, need the people in my life and that we can make it work.

We all have full plates, but learning to make time between the courses is part of the process. NaNoWriMo provides structure to help us learn that lesson. It gives us a concrete goal, an international group of supporters, and a really busy month in which to make it all happen. If you are anything like me, you aren’t going to find a two-hour chunk of time that fits neatly in your schedule. Rather, you are going to take your laptop to work and write during breaks and lunch. You only have fifteen minutes? Well, then grab that cup of coffee and boot up the laptop. Write fifteen words. That’s a sentence, maybe two. Pack it up, go back to work. Eat your lunch quickly at your desk, then pull out the laptop. For me, lunch break writing is the hardest. I work at a computer all day and often am mentally worn out even by lunch. However, I have found that escaping into fiction, turning off the analytical side of my brain and letting the creative side reign, helps refresh me to finish out the day. Just remember to set an alarm for the end of lunch before you get lost in the joy of writing, only to be interrupted by a boss who passes by your office at 13:30 and asks you what you are doing. Because that never happened to me, not four times.

Furthermore, you don’t have to be putting words on the page to be doing writing work. I find that some of my best fiction thinking gets done during my commute home, while on my bicycle, or when I’m pushing a lawn mower around the yard. I crank up some high energy music, focus the active part of my brain on the task at hand, and get to doing what needs to be done. Meanwhile, my unconscious mind invades my thinking brain, co-opting some of the real estate to work out plot problems, have conversations with my characters, and just imagine the possibilities. I’ve had so much success with this, that physical exertion has become one of my main strategies for working my way around or through a block. They key is to carve out a little time after the physical activity to make use of that authorly momentum. It doesn’t need to be much, maybe thirty minutes or an hour, but taking the time to get the words that build up onto paper is essential.

The last piece of advice I can give you about having a packed plate and finding the time to write is that you must maintain your momentum. I don’t care if it is only one sentence, spend the time every single day writing something. Sometimes that one sentence will turn into two, then a couple paragraphs, then ten pages. Sometimes it will stay one sentence, but it will be more than you had the day before. 50,000 words may feel like a sprint, but really it’s just preparing you for the marathon. Daily practice builds those pathways in our brains, strengthening our writing muscles, and making progress. Even if it is only one sentence. They key is that it’s something.

NaNoWriMo is Here!

Author's Perspective Guy Anthony De Marco Ideas & Plotting The Writing Process Your Writing Environment No Comments

Hooray, it’s November! People all around the world will be working on writing a manuscript first draft for NaNoWriMo. Last month the Fictorians featured working on pre-writing, plotting, and other methods of preparing to crank out a novel. Now it’s time to put those ideas into action.

This month we will feature ideas to help you:

  • Avoid or overcome writer’s block.
  • Stay motivated.
  • Hit your goals.
  • Be productive.
  • Avoid burnout.
  • Add in twists to stir up your plot.
  • Find alternate methods to write, such as using dictation software.

I’ve hit the 50K mark every year since 2007. My best year was over 300K words in a month, and last year I hit 50K in three days — this time while using dictation software. Overall, I have over a million words written exclusively during NaNoWriMo.

I always plan out my works in advance, and I set up multiple projects. If I hit a roadblock on one, I can easily switch over to another one until I figure out what the issue is in the first. I’m looking forward to giving updates during NaNoWriMo, and I’m certain you’ll find our upcoming posts timely and useful.

With that said, here are my (admittedly insane) goals for the month of November:

  • Write 500 articles, each of which is around 300 words. That’s 150,000 words, and I will be writing around 17-20 per day. No pre-writing.
  • Write papers for my three graduate classes, plus post on the discussion boards. Not sure what is due during November yet.
  • I will spew out a rough draft for at least one novel @ 50K words, minimum, to keep my NaNo streak going.
  • Whatever short story invites fall from the sky.

Ready, steady…WRITE!

 

About the Author:DeMarco_Web-5963

Guy Anthony De Marco is a disabled US Navy veteran speculative fiction author; a Graphic Novel Bram Stoker Award® nominee; winner of the HWA Silver Hammer Award; a prolific short story and flash fiction crafter; a novelist; an invisible man with superhero powers; a game writer (Sojourner Tales modules, Interface Zero 2.0 core team, third-party D&D modules); and a coffee addict. One of these is false.
A writer since 1977, Guy is a member of the following organizations: SFWA, WWA, SFPA, IAMTW, ASCAP, RMFW, MWG, HWA. He hopes to collect the rest of the letters of the alphabet one day. Additional information can be found at Wikipedia and GuyAnthonyDeMarco.com.

Now, Go Forth and Write!

Being Gentle With Yourself Choice First Drafts Making Progress as a Writer Nathan Barra The Writing Process Your Writing Career No Comments

Welcome to the final hours of our pre-NaNoWriMo time! There are many people who are out there right now, anxiety ridden and dreading the toll of midnight. But y’all, dear readers, should be ready. You should be pumped. Our bloggers and guests have shared a plethora of advice and their own experiences. Hopefully you found their insights useful. You’ve done your prep work, imagined the impossible, and planned your way through to success. You’re ready to climb the mountain.

But what if you are still nervous? I mean, NaNoWriMo is a huge commitment, right? The answer is that you write anyways. You put your butt in the chair, your fingers on the keyboard and you give it everything you have to give. Though there are people who sprint up mountains for fun (crazy, right?) I prefer a hike. A slow and steady plod will get you there just the same, no matter how loud those voices in your head yell that you can’t make it.

What if you aren’t done with your prewriting? You have at least another 965,439.27 hours of prewriting left to do. You have to work through the complete 17th volume of your world’s history, and you don’t know how your protagonist kept their hair in the third grade, and there are at least 60 constellations you have yet to name and invent complete mythologies for… What do you do then? You put your butt in the chair and fingers on the keyboard. At some point, prewriting time needs to be over. As one of my mentors, Kevin Anderson, said to a group of us at a seminar, “A book that doesn’t exist cannot be published.” The hard truth is that most books are never finished, they are abandoned. Start, work your hardest, and you’ll be surprised by what you can do.

But what if you miss a day? How could you possibly crest the 50,000 word peak if you lose your momentum… Step 1: You forgive yourself. Step 2: You put your but in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard. Seeing a theme? I once saw a nutritionist who told all her clients that meaningful change was a process. You only failed when you stopped trying, success being one choice away. You just had to keep choosing to fight. And you know what? It works just as well for writing as it does for losing 40 pounds.

So, all of us here at the Fictorians wish you the best in this year’s NaNoWriMo. Surprise yourself, discover that you are far better than you give yourself credit for, and work your way up that mountain. Know that you aren’t alone in this. Know that what you are about to do is really hard, but you have everything you need to do it. The view from the top will be worth the climb, I promise. First drafts need not be perfect, but they do need to be finished. Now, go forth and write!

Pre-Writing and Screenwriting

Author's Perspective Character Conflict Craft & Skills Ideas & Plotting Kevin Ikenberry Outlines Plot Structure Publishing Storyline synopsis The Writing Life The Writing Process Tropes & Archetypes Your Writing Career No Comments

Until 2012, I was a pantser. Truth be told, I still write short fiction without a plan sometimes, but I’ve been fully converted over to outlining. It’s a long story, but it’s worth the effort. The very first novel I wrote, RUNS IN THE FAMILY, took me 18 months to write. Without a roadmap, I would write all the little ideas and delete troves of words before latching onto another idea and doing the same thing over and over again. It was a slog and I hardly remember finishing it. When I had the idea that became my debut novel SLEEPER PROTOCOL, I vowed that I wouldn’t do that whole awful process again. I determined that I was going to figure out how to write a novel. I’ll cut off some of the story here, but a book on screenwriting changed the way that I write. That book was “My Story Can Beat Up Your Story” by Jeffrey Alan Schecter. It’s a quick, easy read that gives you insights into character development, story pacing, and a structure that resonates with your reader.

Schecter’s book impressed the folks at Mariner Software enough that they built a screenwriting program called Contour that follows his method to the letter. When I found out about Contour, I quickly downloaded the free demo. From there, I ended up purchasing the program. It’s a part of my pre-writing process, which is the theme of the month, so let me break down how I get ready to write a novel.

Let’s say I have an idea already pretty formed in my head. Chances are that I’ve started gathering some notes on that idea in a notebook (yes, I have a notebook problem – there are never enough). I take that pretty formed idea in my head and start to make sure I can craft it into some of the key notions that Schecter teaches about character development. The takeaway here is that without good characters, your story doesn’t live to tell the tale. Forget to develop your protagonist and your book never reaches the end of Act One because there’s nothing to change them. Fail to develop a solid antagonist and your story dies in Act Two. By building the character development first, even before I start the plotting pieces and exercises, I have a solid idea of where the story is going to go based on the goals of my characters. From there, I go through Contour’s beats and guide sheets to develop a “straw” outline – that’s my first pass entirely through Contour. I come back and add more detail to the areas that need it – thanks to big text boxes and the like. Once I’ve done that, it’s time to open Scrivener, my writing software.

Once in Scrivener, I use what’s in Contour to help flesh out a basic structure. I create the building blocks in various ways – either folders and chapters for scenes, the cork board function for random thoughts or unplaced ideas, and any references I need to consult as I write. With the data from Contour about specific plot points, character goals, and what the characters need to discover/solve/act upon, by the time I’ve laid out my pre-writing, I have a serious amount of data already in the program ready for me to use. Yes, it seems like a lot of work, but for me it’s better than trying to handle those dozens of notebooks and pieces of scratch paper. If I take the time to enter the ideas in Contour, it asks the questions for me and my answers further flesh out the plot. From there, writing is relatively easy.

How easy? At this point, I’ve invested several hours in building out Contour and laying out Scrivener the way I want it to. For me, the end result is that I write faster. Remember RUNS IN THE FAMILY? Eighteen months from start to finish? With the method I laid out above, I wrote SLEEPER PROTOCOL in seven weeks. I wrote the recently published sequel VENDETTA PROTOCOL in about nine weeks. It’s a much faster process when I know the route that I’m going to take. By laying out the entire novel, if a character decides to do something differently that I want them to, I can let that play out a little and still have a clear ending in mind. I can adjust things as I go, which is much easier than stopping and starting all over. With a full outline, I know where I have to get back to, and it makes a difference.

No two methods are the same, though. You have to figure out what works for you. For me, that intense planning and note taking process leads to big changes with my speed and productivity, but it may not work for you. There are a million ways to write a novel, but they don’t all require any prewriting. They do require writing, so get to it.