Category: Just Keep Writing Page 3 of 4

Permanence

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On September 22, 2012

In Just Keep Writing, Things That Are Awesome

Sometimes I have a confidence problem. I think that I’m not good enough, my writing isn’t good enough, that no one will ever want to read something I created. I look at all the time I’ve spent over the past seven months – hundreds of hours – and wonder if it’s all a waste of time, if I could have spent it better with family and friends, doing paid work, or hell, maybe cleaning up a bit around here.

And then something inside me, the part that made me start in the first place, that won’t let me keep this story inside my head, says who the hell cares?

Today I got this to remind me of that, in the dark moments when I wonder if I should give up.

Part of a quote from French writer Emile Zola: “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”

I will not be silenced by my own self-doubt. I will not live an ordinary life by failing to try to achieve what I’m capable of. I will be bold.

I did it!

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On September 18, 2012

In By the Numbers, Excitement, Just Keep Writing, Writer's High

So I’m outing myself as a total noob here, but I’m going to do a little happy dance for a minute because I just achieved a very important goal to me, one that a year ago I would have thought was entirely impossible. For all those longtime authors with a few books under their belts this is totally going to be nbd. But for me it’s like, squeeee!

Crazy, hey? I was hoping I’d get it done tonight, and I did, adding about 1,400 words. I can smell the end now, it’s so close (and by close I mean within 20,000 words). I kind of hate to stop where I did tonight, but it’s late and tomorrow’s a school day for the grom. I’ll go to bed happy though, knowing I hit a milestone that I’ve been working toward for over six months.

Exciting! Yay! Exclamation points everywhere!!

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.

Rise and Shine…

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On August 22, 2012

In Just Keep Writing, Routines, Things to Ponder

I posted that to my facebook today, but I’ll put it here too, because it expresses the mementuousness of what happened.

This morning I woke up, bleary-eyed as usual, at the ungodly hour of 7:45a.m. If you know me, you know I’m not a morning person, and since I don’t drink coffee in the a.m. I just act grumpy until about 10 or so. Having fed the offspring and agreed to let them watch TV so I could go back to bed in peace, I found myself unable to fall asleep again. What to do, what to do? It only took fifteen minutes to check email and facebook and nothing interesting was going on there. The idea of trying to write crossed my mind, but I told myself that since my brain felt like cotton, it would be a pointless exercise.

Fuck that noise, I told myself a few minutes later. I had in front of me an hour of uninterrupted time – a daytime rarity on par with being able to grocery shop alone – and I haven’t written anything in about a week. So let’s see what happens. Even 200 words is further than I was yesterday, right? Right.

Turns out my brain is quick to adjust in the morning, more so than I give it credit for (I think – I haven’t re-read anything I did this morning yet). But I’m 1,600 words closer to the end. It’s also probably the last chance I’ll get to do such a thing – my oldest didn’t have school today and I didn’t work, so we didn’t have to get up for anything. The lesson here: whenever I tell myself I can’t write for X reason, I should just sit the hell down and do it anyway.

The whole excessive-word-count thing is still getting me down, which is why I haven’t touched my work in about a week. I can easily see another 30-50,000 words to go in this thing, and today I hit 90,000. I guess I’ll just see where I end up, but it’s a bit depressing to know that I’ve put so much work into it that might end up never getting seen by anyone. I’ve definitely identified a few scenes that could stand to be cut, but certainly not 20,000 words worth. Maybe I can make it up by chopping all my really‘s and very‘s. That’s gotta be a thousand words right there.

Trying Again

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On August 11, 2012

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

Way back when I first started this project, I toyed with the idea of writing some scenes out of narrative order, just as they came to me, so I could preserve them when they were fresh in my mind. Most of the time when I’m thinking about future scenes I see them as pictures in my mind, a little snippet from a movie. It’s only when I’m actually writing them, or working up to writing them, that I start to think about them in words and sentences. I tried writing one scene ahead of time in chapter two, but found it really awkward when it was time to actually fit it into the narrative. It wasn’t the same seamless transition I’m used to having when I write from beginning to end, so I kind of gave up on that idea. Until today.

For whatever reason, one of the key scenes from Book Three started coming to me in words instead of pictures this afternoon. Why, I’m not sure, but you can bet that since I won’t be getting around to even starting Three for at least a couple years, maybe longer, there was no way I was letting it slip by or trying to hold onto it in my mind until then. So now I have a new doc called Random Scenes, with a fresh 1,000 words in it. I guess time will tell if this new attempt will pay off, since I won’t get to that point for a long while, but it was a positive experience today, getting it all down and out of my head while I had it locked down. If it happens again, I’ll probably do the same thing. I even included what might amount to a brief outline beforehand, explaining what happens immediately before and after the scene I wrote, so I know where in the narrative it fits.

Honestly I think I’m moving closer and closer to making an actual outline, to get rid of some of the confusion I have over what happens when. There are all these mini-movie scenes floating around in my head, but I keep moving them around and I’m not sure where they all fit in relation to each other, sometimes. Maybe once I’m finished One, while I give myself a bit of a break before I start editing my first draft, I’ll take some time to nail down a really solid outline. In the meantime I have an Ideas doc for when bits of dialogue and stray thoughts need to be recorded, and this more formal future scenes doc for when I want to actually write them out in full detail.

Incidentally the one I wrote today is a real turning point for the entire story as a whole. Something major changes in Callie, something that sets her off in a completely new direction from that point forward. It needs some work – it’s a dark point and I want to make it even darker than it already is – but the bones are there, the basic structure, which I can hopefully build on, and with my before-and-after notes, I should be able to fit it into the rest of the story nicely once I get to that point. My previous issue with the scene in chapter two, I think, was that I wrote the orphan scene first, then wrote the before and after, then tried to cram the orphan in between them. I think next time if I stop after the before (this is going to get convoluted here), paste the orphan in, then write the after, the transitions will be a lot smoother. At least that’s what I hope. I’ll report back in 2015 or something with an update.

And I’m still writing up a storm on my vacation. I’m on track to have 15-16,000 words written by the time I go home in two days. I hadn’t really set a firm goal beforehand, but I’d thrown the number 10,000 around in my head as something I’d be thrilled to accomplish. Who knew I’d be so motivated, so inspired and so full of fresh ideas? Every other time I’ve tried to write on a non-writing-retreat holiday has always come up as an abject failure. I wonder now if this is my new routine, my new normal that I can maintain once I’m back into the swing of things at home, or a short-lived burst of productivity? Time will tell, I guess. All I know is I have a seven-hour drive ahead of me, and driving always stirs up all kinds of interesting things inside my head.

In The Zone

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On August 7, 2012

In Just Keep Writing, Planning for the Future, Things That Are Awesome, Writer's High

Well, I’ve found the place I should move to and become a full-time writer. Three days into a one-week vacation, I’ve written 6,500 words in about an hour and a half each day, and all of it I really, really like. I sit out on the deck and gaze out over the lake, watch the bald eagles fly by and soak up the sun, and my brain, free from all the distractions of home, gets to writing like a house on fire. I think if I could live here full-time (with the added benefit of family to babysit) I could write four times as fast as I’m used to, and better quality, to boot. I’m definitely going to see if I can find a way to come back here when it’s time to revise my first draft. It’s so easy to be happy and well-rested and stress-free here.

I’m about to reach a point where I’m not quite sure what exactly comes next, which I’m actually not dreading for once, because I want to see what my relaxed and unencumbered mind comes up with to fill that gap. And while I often listen to music while I write, and always when I’m looking for inspiration, I haven’t been this week, and the ideas are still flowing. Maybe the change of stimulation has made me look at things in a different way? I’m also finally starting to feel like I’m moving closer to the climax. I’m not nearly there yet, but I’d say I’m entering into the last third. Which, seeing as how I’m at almost 77,000 words, is probably a really good thing.

And… Go!

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On July 14, 2012

In Excitement, Just Keep Writing, Things That Are Awesome, Writer's High

I have my laptop and my charger. I have a delicious smoothie full of fresh greens from the garden (and chocolate for balance). I have the pillows propped in a most comfortable manner. I have the entire house to myself until at least late afternoon tomorrow. I have a cat who seems inclined to sit beside me most of the day. I have a fresh mind after a lazy morning sleeping in, and I have some busywork to fall back on if my brain needs a break.

In short, I have the perfect recipe for a writer’s day in!

Goal: 5,000 words.

Update: Goal accomplished at 5,091, although it’s 2:30 in the damn morning. Holy shit am I slow. But OMG do I ever love chapter 11. I finished it tonight, and it’s by far my favourite chapter so far. There is so much awesome in it, and I love the relationship dynamic that’s developing.

And a short list of the random things I had to research today:

  • Piezoelectricity
  • Black cohosh
  • Quartz crystals
  • Methods for steeping tea, and why chamomile turns pink when you add lemon (I still don’t know the latter)

It’s funny when I read this post from ten days ago, and how apathetic I was toward writing then. Now, a short time later, I want to write ALL THE WORDS, to the point that it’s this ridiculous hour and I should have been in bed a long time ago because I have to go to work in the morning. Ebb and flow, right? Ebb and flow.

Retreat, Retreat!

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On June 16, 2012

In Distractions, Excitement, Just Keep Writing, Writer's High

I gave myself a mini-getaway today, taking over my parents’ vacant condo to sit on their balcony in the sunshine and write for the afternoon. I need to do this more often, even if it’s just at home. I normally write late at night, anywhere from 10pm to 1am, but doing it during the day, outside with the sun on my face and a beautiful view of the park and the river, really can’t be beat. Birds are chirping! Beez are buzzing! Golfers are cursing when they miss their second putts! Rather than jumping online when my mind needs a bit of a break, I can just gaze out over the city for a moment or two and then get back to my work, without having the interruption in my train of thought that internet distractions usually cause.

I never did think of the idea I’d lost the other day for the start of chapter 9, but I like where I’m going instead, so that’s all right, I guess. And, in keeping with my new no-wifi rule – I don’t know the password to my parents’ network anyway – I wrote 1,100 words in just over an hour, and every one of them came easily.

It’s good to be a writer today.

This Is What I Was Afraid Of

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On June 14, 2012

In Just Keep Writing, My Failings As A Proper Novelist, Writer's Low

I should’ve made an outline. I should’ve used those cue cards I bought months ago to write my stray thoughts for scenes or characters on. I should’ve done SOMETHING to keep track of all the many threads of this story straight since it’s all jumbled out of order in my head.

I’m about to start chapter 9. Yay, right? Chapter 8 ended on a nice little cliffhanger, ensuring the reader will turn the page, only I don’t remember what happens next. See, these two characters, they’re supposed to meet again, and something REALLY IMPORTANT was supposed to be revealed here. And for the life of me I can’t remember what it is. I had this tight little scene plotted out weeks ago, and now where it once resided in my brain, there’s only this:

Goddammit, I say. Now I feel like I’m entering this scene without a plan for it, and it’s just going to be 1,500 words of rambling pointlessness. I’m just going to start writing anyway and hope that one of two things happens: a) I remember what my original thought was and proceed with that; b) I come up with something even more awesome.

Argh.

And yet I’m willing to bet that even after this, I still won’t write out that outline or fill out those cue cards, because I’m always telling myself I’m too busy with the actual writing to take time to do the planning. I need to learn a lesson the hard way at least three times before I’ll actually change my habits.

*headdesk*

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