So Close!

I kept wanting to quit tonight. Kept telling myself I'd make up the words tomorrow or Friday. So exhausted! But I pushed forward, kept on churning out the words until I hit that golden 2300 word mark. I'm now at 44 270 words. I'm going to aim for another 2300 tomorrow, leaving me with just under 3.5K for Friday. And damn it, I will finish the 50K!
The end is so close I can taste it!
Agh!
S.

Cold: Fail!

Okay, it's not really an epic fail, not yet. Just a 4-day fail.

Yeah, so I caught that cold. It sucked. Still sucks, but not so bad. After being short words on Wednesday and Thursday, I didn't get any writing done on Friday. In fact, I missed work and slept until 3:30pm. Watched a couple movies, complained, ate jello, and went back to sleep by like 8:00pm. Man, I haven't slept that much since I was in high school.

Saturday was much the same, and also included no writing. Sinus headache: not good for creative thinking processes. I cancelled knit class on Sunday, but was feeling well enough in the evening to fit in 2300+ words. Great, but not really enough, because I also didn't get any writing done yesterday either! After a full day of work and still not feeling 100%, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open on the drive home... yikes...

All this, of course, means I also failed in blog posts!

Fail and fail. But—! Not epic failures yet. I got in a few thousand words tonight, bringing my total up to 31K and only 1.2K words away from where I should be at this point. I can catch that up. And as for the blog posts... well, take a look at my posting history. Yeah, sketchy at best. I'm still pretty happy with how often I've remembered to post this month! Quality posts? No, not really. But you can't have your cake and eat it too >.<

S.

4K!

Okay, so I fell short by about 400 words yesterday. Not the end of the world, as I was still a little bit ahead of the overall word count I need for 50K by the 30th. Today, I made up for it.

Today was a 4K word day!

With some fun NaNoWriMo math, that's 1700 words more than my usual daily goal, and 1300 words more than what I was aiming for tonight, trying to make up for yesterday.

Which leads me to question what made tonight so awesomesauce? What made today different? Because I started at 7 p.m., same as usual, and worked for about the same amount of time as usual. Maybe it was the extra cup of coffee I had at 3pm. Maybe it was the because this chapter was just easier to write. Maybe there was a solar eclipse in New Zealand or something. Who knows.

(My guess? The coffee. I'll try that again tomorrow...)

Anyway, it's late and I'm tired. 4K is exhausting!
S.

Dialogue First

Someone asked me yesterday what I meant by turning the dialogue into prose. Most of you writerly types out there probably know what I'm talking about, but for those that don't, it's a writing method. For me, it's the method I like best.

When I start outlining a new MS (like I did for my NaNo novel back in early October) I start with a list of goals. That turns into an outline, what I want to happen from start to finish, that's about 3K words long. Then I break that into chapters and scenes, add details and makes changes. The final word count for my NaNo MS outline was about 21K words.

Basically, by the time I start writing I know exactly what's going to happen. My first draft doesn't very often deviate much from what was in the outline. If changes are going to happen the the overall story, they'll happen in the next round of revisions.

I like to think of the actual writing not as the telling of the story (I already know the story from the outline) but getting to know the characters and finding out how the story affects them all individually. So I start each chapter by writing just the dialogue first. Like this:

S      Hi, what's your name?
F      Frodo Baggins, what's yours?
shayla punches frodo.
S      Shayla Smith. Pleasure to meet you, Frodo Baggins.

I'll toss in a few words for description, expression, actions, but it's mostly the dialogue. I find it allows the characters to lead the way through the story, keeping me from spending too much time internalizing the MC. Once the chapter is finished I turn around, go back to the beginning, and start re-writing the dialogue into prose:

"Hi," I said with a smile, opening the door. "What's your name?"
The stranger hesitated. "Frodo Baggins, what's yours?"
I leapt over the counter and punched him in the face, sending him sprawling head over furry feet.
"Shayla Smith. Pleasure to meet you, Frodo Baggins."

So that's turning my dialogue into prose. And actually, since I'm talking about it, here's how Scrivener makes that whole process awesome:

Left window: dialogue. Centre window: chapter four outline. Inspector (right side): synopsis and Project Targets

But now I'm apparently having an allergic reaction to either cats or smoke, so I gotta go dig up a Reactine. Until tomorrow,

S.

The 5K Mark

As per yesterday's post, yeah, I only needed to write one word to make it to 5000, but it still counts as a milestone, right?

And actually, after shoveling snow off the deck, cleaning up halloween decorations, getting the ice off the gazebo and outdoor furniture, and installing a decal on the back of Idiot#1's truck, I sat down for two hours to write. I'm now sitting pretty at 6415 words, which is probably where I'll stay until Monday evening. Yeah, got a lot done today, but there's always more to do. Life happens all the time.

That's all for now. I'll leave you with a pic of the decal that was designed, cut, masked and installed all by me. Because I'm awesome like that. And oh-so-humble.

K-town Represent.

The Groove

I only managed to squeeze in two hours of writing tonight. Late start, and a birthday party to go crash. Life happens.

Only two hours, but they were good.

Reached my word count (2358), bringing my total up to... 4999! Hah, that kinda makes me want to go and write... just... one... more... word...!

But no, I’ll save word #5000 for tomorrow. It’ll be a good way to start the day, no? Wasn’t planning on doing any writing on Saturday, but I think I will, at least for a while. Because I’m in the groove.

Yesterday was a bit stuttered, because I haven’t done anything but edit for a few months, so I needed to get back into writing mode. Probably part of the reason why chapter one came in so short. I almost finished all the dialogue for chapter two tonight, but not quite. I want to at least finish dialoguing the chapter tomorrow. Maybe prose. We’ll see.

But I gotta run! People to see, parties to crash...

S.

NaNo Day 1

NaNoWriMo day one was a success. Well, my ass is sore from sitting in this chair for so long, but the word count was a success.

Correct me if my math is wrong (and it very well could be... math: not my forté) but if I don't plan on writing on weekends, then I've got to get down 2272 words per day. To make that easier to remember, I've rounded up to 2300 and set that as my daily goal in Scrivener.

(Does anyone else love the Projects Targets window in Scrivener? Yeah, me too.)

I'm a dialogue-then-prose kind of writer. Dialogue the chapter first, then go back and add the prose. So I finished both the dialogue and the prose for chapter one tonight, coming in at a total of about 2600 words. That's a short chapter, but usually my first draft chapters are, so no worries. At least I beat my daily goal by 300 words!

Until tomorrow,
S.

Day Tripping

My ten-day staycation is winding down, sadly. Back to work on Tuesday.

Today though, was a bit of a surprise. Slept in, which is odd. But when I did manage to roll my ass out of bed, me and Idiot#1 decided just to grab a backpack, some Tim's, and head into the mountains. We actually drove up the Trunk Road into Ghost River country, instead of into the heart of the Rockies, but it was a great trip nonetheless. Picked out a couple of camping spots for this fall.

Mountain Bound.

Idiot#1 taking some pics.

The Thrilling Adventure of Rocks.

Some creek up that way.

Same creek. Colour.

Truck. It got muddy.

Mud splats in the mirror may appear closer than they are.

Mud!

Mud on my iPhone!

Idiot#1, taking pics again. His camera is better than mine, fyi.

Ghost River. I think.

My feet. In case you were wondering what they looked like.

Back to the highway.

And damn, back to oil country & cow town.

I'm hoping to get some writing in tonight, but don't expect much. Taking it easy. Plus, I've decided to go back to work on a YA Fantasy I started last year, and give my Contemp. Fantasy a bit of breather. I think I need some space from it. The YA needs a lot of brain-stew-time and some serious re-plotting / re-organizing, so it seems like the right kind of project to take a break with.

I'm also thinking of NaNo'ing this November, so I'm hoping for some time tonight to see if I can work that into the schedule. It'll be the first time I've given that a shot. Might be fun.

That's all for now,
S.

Lethargy & LOTR

The lethargy and apathy kicked in on Wednesday morning, a result have having finished this last round of revisions. I mean, great, those revisions are done (almost...) but I was left with a bored sort of, "what next?" feeling.

Luckily, I already had a cure for the lethargy lined up: Lord of the Rings marathon. Because I'm cool like that. By nine yesterday morning I was set up with a pair of sweats, lots of pop and junk food, and all six discs of the three extended edition films.

And nothing cures lethargy like a day of sitting on the couch watching movies. It could have been a Harry Potter, Star Wars or Terminator marathon (don't roll your eyes, I already told you how cool I am...) the result is the same: Today, I feel like getting shit done.

Not sure yet exactly what I'm going to get done, but something. I still have some clean up and notes to make before that last round of revisions is really done. Then I can put that down until my beta reader finishes her notes. Maybe I'll do that. I've got another piece that's partially written that I'd like to jump back into, or I might start another ms right from scratch, because I've got an idea that's been rolling around in my head that I should probably get on paper.

Ah well, it's a beautiful day out there already and it's wide open for whatever I feel like doing. Can't go wrong with that.

S.

More Scrivener Love

I love organizing. And making lists. And being neurotic like that in general. Some people don't take the organizational approach to writing, and that works great for them. For me, organizing background information is one of my favourite parts of the process. It's also a great way to procrastinate if I'm dreading a section, or if I'm just not feeling the writing mojo.

Scrivener is an incredible tool for the kind of organization I love. And of course, its creators have videos for all this kind of stuff if you need a tutorial, but if you want to see some more Scrivener action, I've got the goods.

In the MS I'm currently working on the world has magic. A few different types, with different classes and levels. My characters don't delve too deep into this stuff in the first book, but it'll come into play in book two onwards. So I needed a way to organize the types of spells and what my characters know about them. I'm just going to jump right in and show you how that's going…

Creating a new folder (see the Folder+ button in the bottom left?) and calling it Grimoire.

Just for fun, giving it a Red Book icon. As you can see in my binder (left side
of the screen shot) I love all the different icons to choose from!

Laying out how I want each "page" of my grimoire to look.
I really went to town on the formatting.
You can blame my graphic design instincts.

Moving that layout to the Template Sheets folder makes it a template.
Renaming it something appropriate, like Grimoire Page.

Creating a new text page in the Grimoire folder, from Grimoire Page template.

Referencing the spell (highlighted) from the MS text (on the left split screen) and filling in
the details in the Grimoire Page (on the right split screen).

Because I want to organize the Grimoire by the three classes of magic, I create three
subfolders under the Grimoire, changing their names and icons.

Dragging and dropping different spells under the correct class of magic, and adjusting
the page order so the lower level spells come first.

And that, ladies and gents, is how I'm going to keep track of the different types of magic in Deyl's world, the different spells, and what she knows or has seen about them. Whenever I'm unsure, I can just flip open the grimoire and find the answers I need. With the split screen view turned on, I can even reference them next to the text I'm working on. It's pretty sweet.

If you're a Scrivener user—or thinking about becoming one—I hope this helped!   :D 

Bye for now,
S.

The Dining or Writing Room

My house has a dining room. Idiot#1 and I don't actually "dine" in this dining room. Plate on lap works just fine for us, whether its outside, in front of the tv, or with a book in hand.

Thus, my dining room is actually the writing room.

@BA_Matthews said last week that she can't write at a desk—uncomfortable and uncreative. I imagine that's the same for a lot of other writers out there (and other creative types, whatever their media may be), but for myself the opposite is true.

I'm a graphic designer. For eight hours, five days a week, I sit at a desk and have to turn on the creative gears. Doesn't matter if I'm in the design zone or not (like writers block, but with graphics and pictures and copy), I just gotta do my job: sit down at desk, be creative, coffee, design some stuff, lunch break, be creative some more, yell at the staff, design some more, go home.

After so many years my brain is wired like sit at desk = imagine + create + drink coffee.

So at home I find my best environment for writing is actually—wait for it—at a desk!

The desk.

The bookcase.

The Vietnamese iced coffee.

The new chair. May the old one burn in hell.

The Jade plant.

And that, folks, is the writing room. My favourite part is, of course, that I'm in front of the patio door looking outside. When it's too chilly to actually sit outside at least I can pretend I'm out there.

Until next time,
S.

Miss the Writing

So far 2012 has been all about editing I Had to Fall. I started with my critique partner's notes and worked through all the minor changes she recommended. She'd brought up some bigger issues and ideas, so I allowed those time to percolate. Lots of percolation time.

The trade show business is busiest here from early March until early June. I end up working ten hour days and weekends (paid overtime, thank god) and, after I get the house tidied and dinner done, I basically go to sleep. So I had a bit of lull during those months where the editing was on hold.

I picked up my work again after the Global Petroleum show and worked on it fairly regularly. So I'm clipping along at a good pace now, getting about a chapter done (the major edits now) per day. Which is great. I like where the story is going. But...

I miss the writing! I can't even remember the last time I was working on something I was actually writing instead of editing. I miss plotting, and dialoguing, and finding things out about my characters I didn't know, or having them take me places I didn't expect. Don't get me wrong, I love editing - it appeals to that side of me that likes to have to-do lists for my to-do lists, all alpha-numerically organized of course. Writing is the creative side, and I really miss it.

I've got at least three more weeks until I'm finished editing I Had To Fall. I'm not sure what I'm doing with it after that - trying to find another beta reader, or querying it into the world - but I know what my next project is going to be: something that needs writing!

That was my little rant for today. Since I discussed so much editing, I think tomorrow I'll show you all some pieces from Scrivener and how I use that in my editing process. Until then...

S.

Return of the Jedi

In this case, I am the Jedi returning, after a long hiatus from the blogverse.

No matter, I'm here again for a while. Critiquing, revising and writing a short story. I'm just starting week two of my holidays, and thought I'd share a photo of my office for the week:

Now, to the writing!

Hopefully I'll be back on here tomorrow...
S.

More Scrivener Love

Just a quick post for anyone out there who's been thinking about purchasing Scrivener. Do it. The program is super cheap, and amongst other things, it's great for editing.

Right now I've got two documents on the go: the copy of my manuscript I'm editing, and the marked-up copy from my beta reader. Scrivener lets me keep both documents in the same "binder" and bring them up in side-by-side view. I can adjust the width of each column, scroll up and down each independently, and show or hide my sticky notes comments (thoughts for me to deal with later) on the far right.

And of course, this is just one of the many awesome things Scrivener can do. Try it out.

Today's Muse

Real life is calling, but this afternoon I'm going to fit in a few hours of writing. Maybe even a few more this evening, if the house isn't overrun with guys watching the NHL All-Star game...

The chapters I'm working on need some action, some intensity of emotion, so here's a sample of what I'm turning up on the headphones today:

And this:

I saw Into Eternity play in Edmonton last year, just before Stu joined Iced Earth. Man, I love that vocal range! It's the intensity of the music though that makes this one of my favourite bands to write to. Not every scene is right for this, of course, but for action? Awesome.

As an added bonus, I'm going to see Stu sing again in a couple of weeks when Iced Earth plays Edmonton! Any one else here headed up to that show? Or seeing them somewhere else?

Real life.

Real life, it sure gets in the way of digital life, eh? I've been barely more than a ghost on here, fb, twitter, aw, and authonomy for the past couple weeks. First I was knocked over by the first cold of the season, then my mom came out west for a week-long visit here, and now I'm scrambling to get ready for Halloween, another season of teaching knit class, and my ten-day trip through California that starts in... 19 days! Ah!

Which also means I haven't had much time to write. Which sucks, because I hate putting down the first draft once I get rolling. Dang. 

What I have been able to get done with this first draft in the past couple weeks is... interesting. I think I was on about chapter eight or nine, when I realized that I needed to make a major change to the characters. Essentially, I had two female characters that were so similar to each other (both happy little friends of the protagonist) that I knew I could condense them into one character to move the plot forward faster. Which seemed like a great idea, until I held the idea up to my character grid and saw that I would be left with only two female characters and about eight male characters. Bit of an imbalance that I wouldn't be happy with.

So I brainstormed another solution. I can cut one of the men (who I already had some issues with in terms of character development) and use one of those two females in his place. It changes her essential purpose completely, yet still leaves her character intact. Instead of being a happy little friend, she's now a happy little friend with a seriously evil ulterior motive. Which makes her way, way more interesting and solves my initial problem. I'm happy with the idea.

Good thing I can at least brainstorm while ill / visiting with mom.

Normally, I'd just push forward with the story from here and worry about reworking those characters in the first edit. This time I think I'll go back and change it (rough and dirty though the changes may be) before I continue. It's a pretty major change, and I'll feel better about moving on if I just fix it now.

So if I can find some time to get back to writing before California, that's what I'll do...

Good Morning

Morning again, my favourite time of day. Yesterday we had a wildly beautiful sunrise, which I snapped a couple crappy photos of on my way into the office. Here:

So that was yesterday. Another dawn, another day. Today I've got to run around Calgary, errands, errands, and more errands. In fact, "Well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we're going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time."

You do know where that quote is from, right? Right?!?!

I'm probably not going to get any writing in until later this evening, because it's supposed to be something like 29°C today, and I refuse to coop myself inside during the very last of the summer weather. It's just wrong.

Maybe I'll bring my Air outside and write...? We'll see.

Growth: Why I hope writing is like designing

Last post I talked about character development, and then I disappeared for a few days. Because I was busy busy developing characters ;)

Now I've got a full cast of well-rounded, multi-dimensional characters to work with, a solid 25K outline that covers everything right up to climax of the story, and I'm ready to start writing!

This is, of course, the best part of the project. And this time, I'm facing the challenge of a main character who interacts with—but doesn't speak to—any of the other characters until a third of the way through the story. Yes, challenge indeed.

Speaking of challenges, I'm also in the midst of learning how to critique others work. I'm beta'ing novels from two different writers and I've already found that it's a very different thing from critiquing my own work. Another interesting thing that's come up, is when one of the writers was worried I'd be offended by her comments. I assured her that I wouldn't be, but it led me into some further connections between my day job as a designer and my evenings and weekends as a writer.

I've mentioned here and elsewhere some of the similarities between the two. There is another aspect of writing that feels like design (and probably like many other jobs, but hey, this is my experience): Growth.

I went to college to study graphic design. My profs taught me the how-to and the rules of design, and then sent me off to give it a go. I laid out my ideas, thought they were amazing, only to have the Profs turn around and tear them apart. They showed me -- either gently or ruthlessly -- what I was doing wrong. Sometimes the feedback was bad enough to nearly put me in tears.

So I tried again.

For three years.

By the time I received my diploma I could hardly bear to look at the work I'd done in my first year--it was so hideous! I'd come a long way since then, and I never would have if I didn't have my professors and colleagues ripping my ideas and my work to pieces.
Then I went out into the Real World. I picked up a job in Calgary almost immediately after I finished school, designing trade show booths. That was four years ago. When I compare my early days there, to the work I do now, so much has changed. I've really learned to separate my ideas from myself—when someone hates my work, it's the idea they hate, not me. Thick skin, that was a big change. Also:

I'm faster. A job that would have taken 8 hours of design four years ago now takes me 2 or 3.

I'm better. I used to have to work through five or six different concepts with clients, making radical changes, before I got what they wanted. Now the design is usually signed off in two or three proofs, covering only minor revisions.

I'm smarter. Four years ago I struggled to see the problems in my own designs, what I could do or change to make the client happy. Now if a client comes back to me feeling unsure about how something works in the layout I can see immediately what I need to change to fix it.

What I'm saying with all this rambling is that I hope, when everything is said and done, that my writing evolves the same way my design has. I spend a lot of time writing, and I think what I write is good. Now I'm having beta readers tear it apart, and that can only be a good thing. I hope I learn a lot from seeing my work from their viewpoints. And I hope in a few years I'll be able to look back on my early writing and cringe.
I hope that, with time and effort, I'll be a faster, better, and smarter writer.

Has that happened for you? Or are you like me, looking ahead and just hoping?

State of the Writing

Well, so far today I've managed to get another 1500 words down on the page. It's not much, but then I don't really think word count matters in the outlining stage. Just MHO.

What really matters is that I've gone from a very loose, random, unstructured outline with too few characters, enormous plot holes and bad clichés to a full 31-chapter outline that has a smooth, start-to-finish plot, incorporating a variety of characters and their sub-stories, and only a few not-so-bad clichés. Excellent.

This evening I'm going to go back through the outline and clean it up, add notes and synopses, and update my character grid to match. Tomorrow, with the updated grid, I should be able to see the big picture and tweak the outline, hopefully until I'm happy with it and I can call the first draft done.

So next week, I'll be world-building. With my first novel, I HAD TO FALL, I started the writing without any real world building done, only loose character and location sketches, and just a lot less detail. This time I'm going about it differently. I'm hoping that, within a week or two, I'll be ready to start writing!

By the way, with this MS I'm really using Scrivener for the first time. Anyone got any neat tips and tricks for working with the program?

We have a title!

Okay, some success since yesterday's post:

I messed around some more with the synopsis, and did get Vera talking sooner. Not as soon as I thought would be necessary, but that led me to something else…

The working title: SPEECHLESS.

It might not stick, but it'll do the trick for now. I also came up with an external crisis that I like, and that meshes well with the rest of the story and characters. I got far enough along in the synopsis today that I felt like switching over to my first draft character grid.

It was a good thing I did. Right away I can see plot holes and… I don't have enough characters! Over the next few days I'll jump back and forth between the synopsis and character grids, filling in those plot holes and adding some more characters. I've already found another character floating around in the free space in my mind who fits in as a nice little antagonist with my current cast.

And what did I say about the trilogy split revealing itself in the process? It did :)

To be honest, I'm kind of looking forward to working with a character who doesn't say a peep until a third of the way into the story. It'll be a challenge, creating interaction and engaging the reader while limiting Vera to non-verbal communication. But a challenge is a good thing.

For a Monday, it was a good day! Must be because it's a holiday...