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Adding to my Shelf

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On September 6, 2012

In Learning, Organizing, Planning for the Future, Revision

I guess I’m going back on my no-advice-books rule again. I’ve seen Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print mentioned on three blogs in as many days, so I thought I’d take a look at it. While I’ve got many great tips on editing after the first draft is complete, this looks like it might be useful as well. For $13, it’s worth a try, I figure (I also bought yet another canning book – sshh, I’m just going to hide it on the shelf with the others and hope no one notices).

I’m not going to read it until I’m done my story though. I don’t like the spectre of revision hanging over my head while I write. Even now I sometimes look at my freshly-typed-out work and wonder if I’m just going to cut it in the end, and that’s depressing.

I’m also thinking about trying out Scrivener. It’s another thing I see praised often by writers for its ability to organize everything. Thoughts, anyone? It sure looks pretty. Makes me wonder why I spent so much on coloured index cards and post-its when I could have had them all on my screen. Right now I use Open Office, which works fine, but because I have everything in one massive doc, I do find myself scrolling through my 180-ish pages of single-spaced text looking for a specific reference in a chapter I can’t remember. This happens at least two or three times a day. So getting organized might be nice. I hear it also helps with outlining, my new favourite thing. Did you know, I’m through 1.5 bullet points since the other day? So great.

I guess what I want to know is, is there any point in getting it this late in the game, three-quarters of the way through this book? Will transfering everything over be a giant pain in the ass? Or should I keep it in mind for when I start Book Two and stay the course for now?

I’m buying roughly 200lbs of tomatoes to can tomorrow. I imagine one of two things will happen with respect to writing in the next week: either I don’t do any at all, or my keyboard will be stained red and speckled with seeds while I cram in a few paragraphs in between canner loads.

You Would Think…

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On September 5, 2012

In Learning, My Failings As A Proper Novelist, Research, Writer's Low

…that a person who worked as a researcher for years would look something up for accuracy ahead of time before making it an important plot point. Right? That would be the sensible thing to do.

Yeah, not so much, if you’re me. And it was one of those stupid little takes-five-seconds-to-verify things. Two words to type into Google Translate. I’ve been meaning to do it for months. Turns out my knowledge of foreign languages isn’t quite as good as I thought it was and I made a mistake that puts me in a bit of a quandry. Shitfuckdamn. Time to dig myself out of another hole.

OMG Outlines

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On September 4, 2012

In Big Ideas, Just Keep Writing, Organizing, Planning for the Future, Things That Are Awesome

My brain apathy wasn’t lending itself to making words that fit nicely together tonight, so I decided to bang out some point-form notes on everything I wanted to have happen before writing THE END (or TO BE CONTINUED I guess, technically).

What a fantastic fucking idea that was. It’s, like, all right there. In order. And even while I was writing it out, some parts that were just vague notions – “they’ll find this thing, somewhere, somehow” turned into well-thought-out, logical scenes. There are layers. There is conflict that I hadn’t even considered. And while it’s too late tonight to get started on any new words, tomorrow when I sit down I can look at my little outline and say “BAM here’s what you’re going to write about tonight,” instead of twiddling my thumbs for twenty minutes wondering how things should progress.

And I am so excited about this. I do love the spontaneity of leaving some things to figure out as I go, but having a basic beginning-to-end map (in this case, a halfway-through-chapter-17-to-end map) to refer to is solid gold for my overfilled mind. So thank you, everyone ever who said outlining is important. Also, thank you everyone ever who said outlining isn’t important because you gave me the confidence to write 17 1/2 chapters without one and that went just fine too.

Tomorrow my fingers are going to be nimble and my brain is going to be sharp and I’m going to tackle the first of my 11 bullet points. November isn’t that far off but now I feel like I know how to get there.

Back At It

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On September 3, 2012

In Just Keep Writing, Musical Interlude

I went camping for four days over the long weekend and missed being able to write the whole time, but now that I’m home again, showered and alone in my little corner, my mind feels slow and my fingers feel stupid. Neither of them seem to be able to accomplish anything tonight, nor are they motivated to try. Too much campfire smoke in my eyes? Too much cider in my belly? Too much fresh air in my lungs? Hard to say, really. I’m going to do what I always do when I have fits like this and stare at my doc file for a bit until it shames me into writing something. After that, things should get better.

In other, smaller news, I pasted a big chunk of my story into I Write Like and came up with this:

I write like
Margaret Atwood

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

I happen to like Margaret Atwood and her books quite a lot, particularly Oryx and Crake, so I consider that to be quite a compliment. The fact that she’s an awesome Canadian author is just the icing on the cake.

All right, that’s enough procrastination for tonight, I think. At the very least, I have some outline stuff to write down.

(did I just use the o-word? Yes, yes I did. It’s this new thing I’m trying called stop forgetting everything)

I’ll leave you with the song that I have a hard time believing wasn’t written with Callie in mind – I can’t stop listening to it, because it feels so right.

Have a peek at the lyrics if the weirdness of the video is throwing you off.

Man, this post is as disjointed and scattered as my head right now.

Six Sentence Sunday

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On September 2, 2012

In Words I Made

“Fucking hell, that hurt!” he yelled, rubbing the spot where the stick had hit.

“When you’ve had your knees knocked out from under you or been thrown down onto the concrete floor a few times you can complain about it hurting, now are you coming at me, or did I kill you?”

“Assuming that was the blade and not the handle that hit, you killed me,” he said.

“You weren’t prepared for everything,” I pointed out, careful to keep my face neutral.

“No, I was not,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Good, now show me how to use the crossbow.”

***

Check out Six Sentence Sunday for more entries!

Can I Call Myself An Award-Winning Author Now?

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On August 30, 2012

In Uncategorized

I’ve been nominated for one of those link-sharing things called a Liebster Award, by a fellow writer and blogger I’ve lately followed, Paige Nolley. Thanks!

The rules are thus: you get nominated, you answer a few questions, you nominate a few someone elses with questions of your own – writers I presume. I’m not sure I know of five that have blogs so I might come up a little short in that regard, but here are my answers to the questions I was given.

1. If you could resurrect a deceased author to pick their brain over lunch, who would it be and why?

I’m going to go with Jane Austen on this one. Not only is she one of my favourite authors, she and I are birthday twins. I imagine the conversation will mainly revolve around how much it sucks to be born so close to Christmas when no one pays any attention to you and none of your friends can come to your party because “it’s such a busy time of year.” I’d introduce her to sushi and she would explain the many benefits of corsets.

2. If you were famous to the extent of JK Rowling, Stephen King, or Nora Roberts, would you embrace that fame or hide away? Why?

Oh, I would SO hide away. For two reasons. 1. My kids don’t need that kind of attention in their lives. I want to be normal mom, not why-are-all-those-people-taking-your-picture mom. 2. Hiding away has always been my plan, regardless of career outcome. There’s a little plot of land in the BC interior somewhere with my family’s name on it, along with a bunch of chickens, a goat or two, a large vegetable patch and a woodstove. I’m a half-assed prepper, because being a city girl half-assed is pretty much all you can do. The money from King-level fame could build me a pretty sweet bunker that could withstand any zombie apocalypse.

3. What is your biggest inspiration as a writer?

Music. Besides the fact that my books wouldn’t even exist without the random chance of two songs out of 900 playing back-to-back on my iPod one day, so many of the relationship dynamics and events in my story have been inspired by lyrics and music. My ‘Songs for Writing’ playlist has a lot of Tegan & Sara, Metric, Pixies, the Bird and the Bee, Matthew Good, Shout Out Louds, Lykke Li, and plenty more. I like to post songs that are on repeat while I’m writing on this blog periodically, and eventually I’d like to do a chapter-by-chapter playlist for anyone who might read it. When I’m stuck on something or out of ideas I put on ‘Shuffle All’ and wait for something to catch my ear. It works 100% of the time, and a lot of the time it sends me off in a direction I hadn’t anticipated.

4. If you could have one super-power, what would it be and why?

The inability to feel fear. It’s no coincidence my main character has a crippling phobia. I write what I know.

5. What is the hardest thing you have ever had to do on your own?

Push out a baby. As much as there are people there to support you (and I had wonderful midwives and my awesome husband with me) in the end you’re doing it all by yourself. It’s your body vs. your brain. It probably comes as no surprise then that the hardest thing I had to do on my own is also the most amazing thing I had to do on my own.

I’m going to reflect on who I might send this to and update with a list and questions. If you straight up want a nomination, post in the comments and you’re in.

Putting It Out There

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On August 29, 2012

In Big Ideas, Things That Are Awesome

I’m thinking about doing Six Sentence Sunday for the next little while. One thing I haven’t done on this blog is add any samples of what I’ve been writing. I like what I write – I really do – but I have this inferiority issue where I think that no one else will. Even though the few people I’ve shared with are all “MORE WE WANT MORE. MORE CHAPTERS. RIGHT NOW.” Well now it’s time to punch fear in its fucking face. I don’t want to spend hours sifting through my writing looking for the bits that I think are the awesomest, so I think I’ll just take six from whatever I’ve written that day. And there will be rules, because I like rules.

1. Thou shalt not receive any context. All thou shall get is six.

2. Thy own post shall be true to what I have written.

3. Wretchedness shalt not prevail shouldst thy forget to post.

4. Thy use of autopost shall be permitted in cases of grand voyages and other distractions.

5. Such a challenge as this shall inspire thy best writing lest thou giveth words of woe.

Seriously, people used to talk like that?

Stay tuned for the first edition, coming September 2.

Goal-Slash-Throwdown

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On August 26, 2012

In Excitement, Planning for the Future, Revision

I’m setting a challenge for myself. An achievable goal. A milestone to work toward. And I’m going to write it out so I am held accountable, because there’s nothing more motivating than public failure.

At the beginning of November I’m going to Mexico for a week with my sister. The goal is to have a completed first draft of The Unravelling by then so I can sit on the beach with my red pen and a printed manuscript and start identifying areas for revision.

The last time I went on a tropical vacation, to Hawaii in April, I brought my laptop with me but didn’t write a single word (I also had two kids to entertain, whereas this is going to be a girls-only trip, so there’s that). I aim for this to be different.

So there you go. Ten weeks to get ‘er done. I think it’s doable.

Reaching Out

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On August 25, 2012

In Introduction

I just added a new Contact page up there ^. It would be great to chat about writing with other scribes. I’d like to collect a couple more early readers to send my work to when I’m finished, but I need to get to know someone a bit first. Of course, random fawning praise is always welcome too. Anyway, drop me a line sometime, won’t you?

Conflict with Conflict

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On August 24, 2012

In Talking It Out, Things That Are Hard

I’ve been writing this argument scene for a couple days, and the dialogue just isn’t falling together for me. Everything sounds really awkward, and I can’t come up with better words for my characters to express themselves with. I think I have a really good sense of the emotions and the non-verbal aspects of the argument, but what they’re saying isn’t coming out right. When I run through the scene in my head, there’s a lot of gesturing and facial expressions and whatnot, but no dialogue. It’s frustrating! Sharing (and avoiding sharing) feelings is so awkward sometimes. I roughed in a few sentences, but it’s definitely something I have to come back to later.

In my own life, I’m a conflict avoider, so it’s no surprise to me I’m struggling with this one. Callie, however, can be a conflict provoker. She often speaks without thinking and will use words as weapons, so this is something I’m really going to have to work on, especially since there are many, many more conflicts in her future.

At least I have the luxury of doing what I’ve always wished I could in real life: going back and changing what I said hours later when I think of a way better line.

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