Ron Toland
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  • Keeping Score: 17 February 2023

    Started the new job this week! Which means I’m suddenly wondering how in the world I ever had time to write while working full-time 😅

    I’ve made it about halfway through the first editing pass on the novel. Well, I made it halfway as of Monday, but the rest of the week I’ve wrapped work feeling simultaneously too drained to be creative and too stuffed full of facts and process (from the company onboarding) to get anything done.

    It doesn’t help that said onboarding consists of four hours of back-to-back meetings, which is hard on this introvert. I’ve not had the Zoomies in a while, and this is definitely it 😬

    I’m telling myself to be patient, though, rather than beating myself up about not making daily progress. The onboarding will finish, the meetings will drop away, and I’ll eventually work those extrovert muscles enough to handle a 9-to-5 again (and be able to write after the work day is done). Plus, there’s always the weekend. And there’s a long one coming up, so I can carve out some time (and spoons) to play catch-up.

    Wish me luck!

    → 6:55 PM, Feb 17
  • Keeping Score: 10 February 2023

    As you can imagine from my last post (and lack of posting through Nov, Dec, or Jan), absolutely nothing went as planned, writing-wise, over the last three months.

    NaNoWriMo? Sure, I got 16,000 words into it before crashing and burning. Now I have two incomplete novels sitting on my laptop, waiting for me to pick them back up 😬

    The TCF? Dropped it. Okay, I delayed it first, then dropped it. There was simply too much else going on, between racing to get to the PR finish line and interviewing for a new job. And the holidays. I’m still studying French, mind, but I’ve had to let go of the idea of getting tested on it, for now.

    Ditto the Clarion West classes. I attended a few sessions of the mystery-writing one, but the homework (a new story every week) overwhelmed me, and the lectures + feedback turned out to be less valuable than I thought. So I backed out of the other classes, too, freeing up time in my schedule to deal with everything else that was happening.

    I did get two new stories out of the class, though. True, one of them I didn’t finish until January, and then only by ignoring the parameters of the original assignment. But still. One of them I think might be a trunk story, but the other (the January one) I’m really rather fond of, and plan to polish up for submission…later 😅

    On the good news front, I did keep up with my critique group (bless them for putting up with me), and we’re almost to the end of the prison-break-in-space novel I wrote a few years ago (fourth novel completed, second sci-fi book, prior to the two unfinished novels were started). So I’ve gone back through their feedback up to this point, distilled it to a set of edits to make, and have started in on actually making those edits.

    I know, this is what you’re supposed to do with novels, yes? Write a first draft for yourself, do a second draft for others to read, and then edit, edit, edit based on feedback and your own reads before sending it out to agents.

    Well, I’ve got the first part down — four novels in first draft stage — and I’ve done the second (for this book, anyway), but I’ve never gone past that point. Always started a new book rather than revise the last one.

    But not this time! I’m going through the thing, chapter by chapter, editing as I go. Most of the feedback I received concerned physical descriptions and layout, so that’s what I’m working on first. Which means, oddly enough, adding material instead of chipping things away. So the book’s getting longer, not shorter, as I work on this revision.

    If all goes well 🤞I think I’ll have the edits wrapped by May. Which is not that far away, all things considered! Then it’ll be time to compile a list of possible agents, and start shipping out query letters.

    What about you? If you did NaNoWriMo, how did it go? If you didn’t, have you made any writing goals for 2023, and how are they coming along so far?

    → 10:31 AM, Feb 10
  • Keeping Score: 4 November 2022

    So I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year.

    “But,” I hear you say, “you’re already studying for the TCF in December, trying to put together the last pieces for your permanent residence application, taking three classes from Clarion West online, and supposed to be finishing those short stories you started over the summer. How are you going to also write 50,000 words in a new novel?”

    And, well…I have no idea.

    But! I want to try, for three reasons:

    1. I’ve noticed lately my writing output has slowed. A lot. Used to be I could crank out 500 words a day, no problem. Now I’m struggling to get even a hundred words down. I need something to kick me back into gear. NaNoWriMo can act as that something.
    2. The short story I’ve been working on — the sci-fi story that started as flash and then grew to 8,000 words in a second draft — has grown even more. I don’t know what the word count is, because I’ve been writing it out by hand. But when I stepped back and wrote up an outline, it looked very much like one of my novels. Not a short story. And if I’m going to be writing a new book anyway to finish this out, what better way to get it started than during NaNoWriMo?
    3. Failure is an option. All of this is voluntary, with the exception of the PR application (fingers crossed I get invited soon, and can get my paperwork together in time). I can drop out of the Clarion West classes without any hassle. And if I don’t hit 50,000 words this month on the novel, so what? So long as I push towards it, spend more time writing, and make progress on a new book, that’s enough.

    Number 3 there is really important to me. I don’t want this to become a source of stress. I want it to be motivating; a challenge, not a directive. So I’m letting myself be okay with flubbing the first two days, when I only cranked out 400 or so words. Last night I put in over a thousand, and it felt great (I rewarded myself with some leftover Halloween candy). If I can keep that pace up, and do a little extra on the weekends, I’ll make the goal. And if not? Well, at least I’ll have a solid start to the next book.

    If you want to follow along with my stumbling progress, my username is mindbat and my project is here. Hit me up, and let’s be writing buddies!

    → 9:05 AM, Nov 4
  • Short Book Reviews: October 2021

    It's been a while since I've done one of these, hasn't it? checks calendar winces Way too long.

    Part of that was the grind of the Book That Wouldn't End. Not the novel I'm writing, mind you, but the book way down at the end of this list, the one that took me all of August and most of September to finish. And it was good! But very dry and dense in an academic way, and so reading it was like shoving day-old oatmeal into my brain. Healthy, for sure! But not fun.

    And part of it has been simply time. I've neglected this blog, I feel, mostly because somewhere between July and now everything seemed to speed up, all at once, and I suddenly had no time for anything. It definitely contributed to the writer's block I'm just now climbing out of. And it meant certain things -- like these posts -- just got dropped.

    But! I'm on the mend, mental-health-wise (I think. I hope), reading again, and writing, so it's time to pick things back up here.

    As always, reviews are posted in reverse chronological order, with the most recent book I finished first.

    Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff

    Finally got around to this one. And I can easily see how it could become a TV series; not only is the book very visual and quick-moving (in terms of style), but each section forms its own little “episode” where a different character takes the spotlight and has a supernatural encounter (of various kinds). It all builds to a climax that’s so perfect — and perfectly justified — I’m looking forward to re-reading it just to see all the threads coming together again.

    The Likeness, by Tana French

    Jesus, this one sucked me in. The Irish lilt to the dialog, the immersive descriptions of the country house where most of the book takes place, the personal history of the characters...Can you want to live inside a murder mystery? Because damned if I didn’t want to spend more time with this one. Expertly done, from start to finish.

    The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

    Ok, this one had me with the title alone. I was worried that it couldn’t deliver on that promise, but I needn’t have been. It’s a cross of Groundhog Day and Quantum Leap, mixed with some classic Agatha Christie, topped with a powerful message about forgiveness. I don’t want to say anything more, for fear of spoiling it, but if that sounds like your bag, pick it up; you won’t be disappointed.

    Luminferous, by J Dianne Dotson

    The finale is here! A series literally decades in the making (the author wrote the first draft of what became the second book in her teens) finally gets the send-off it deserves. I won’t spoil anything here, just to say that this fourth book continues the trend of each one being better than the last.

    If you’ve enjoyed the series so far, there’s plenty of twists and turns to keep you hooked. If you haven’t read any of them yet but enjoy old-school sci-fi (think classic Star Trek or Anne McCaffrey) you should check them out!

    The Field and the Forge, by John Landers

    The book that almost killed me.

    It's a survey -- just a survey! -- of the kinds of physical restraints an organic economy imposes on technology, culture, and warfare. It's incredibly eye-opening, and completely ruins any sense of "realism" you might have felt lingered in shows like Game of Thrones.

    Also, nothing makes me appreciate modern life more than thinking about how just to transport food (say, grain, or fruit) to a market in pre-industrial times, you were usually transporting by animal, but just to get there you had to bring food along for yourself and for the pack animal, which meant traveling more than a few hours (let alone more than a day) was simply not viable (because at some point the animal is carrying just food that's going to be consumed along the way, making the trip worthless economically).

    There's some theory packed in there, which Landers is gracious enough to admit is completely bogus but serves to illuminate different aspects of these complex phenomena. The interaction between population, production efficiency, and military size is especially instructive. Ditto the possibility for certain inheritance schemes to lead to a surplus of "second sons" that have nothing and thus no stake in society, causing all kinds of trouble.

    Anyway, I'm glad I read it, I might refer to it from time to time, but ye gods I will never be re-reading it.

    → 8:48 AM, Nov 1
  • Keeping Score: October 16, 2020

    Did I say five new flash stories last week?

    At my current pace, I'll be lucky to finish one.

    Apparently, I forgot how hard a first draft can be.

    I am working on one, though. It's a sweet little story about a group of kids who turn cannibal.

    ...did I not mention it was horror?

    I'm sketching it out, 100 words at a time. I say sketching because I'm writing it in patches, jumping from place to place in the narrative instead of writing it straight through. It's a way for me to get past any block I have writing a certain section. I can skip ahead, or go back to a previous scene, and come back to the part that's giving me trouble later.

    It's working, because I'm already eight hundred words in. That also means this is likely not going to be a flash piece, unless I trim it way down after. Which is fine, but once again shows I'm not a great judge of how big the story will be based on the idea I have. Maybe that's something that will develop over time, as I write more pieces of various sizes?

    Meanwhile, the novel's heading out to beta readers. And I've got some time now to pay attention to where my short stories are going, and start submitting them again.

    Which means I'll start getting rejections rolling in again. Each one still stings, but...really, there's no other choice. Write, Finish, Submit: The last step there is as crucial as the others.

    Hope where-ever you are, you're able to keep writing, eight months into this pandemic. Using whatever tricks you can to keep your creativity alive.

    → 8:00 AM, Oct 16
  • Keeping Score: October 9, 2020

    It’s done! The edits are done!

    Well, this round of edits, anyway...There’ll be more, down the line.

    But the third draft of the novel is finished!

    This is the first draft that I feel can be seen, so I’m sending it out to beta readers, hoping to get some good (meaning: useful and thorough, not merely positive) feedback.

    I’ll also need to send it to sensitivity readers, because some of the characters are from ethnic groups outside my own. I think I’ve done them justice, but I know I’m not the best judge of that. So I’ll ask some friends of mine to be additional readers, letting me know if I’ve messed anything up.

    While I wait (and lean into my reading, to unwind a bit), I'm going to work on a short story or three.

    Or five.

    I found a horror anthology that’s accepting flash fiction on five different subjects through December. The topics are broad enough that I’ve brainstormed a few different story ideas for each.

    Since they’re flash pieces, I thought I’d write one up for each topic, and submit them all (which they allow). Five little stories for my brain to chew on while I take a break between editing passes.

    What about you? What do you do, between revisions of a longer work? Or do you take any sort of breathing room between them, at all?

    → 8:00 AM, Oct 9
  • Keeping Score: October 2, 2020

    I've been having incredibly vivid dreams.

    Dreams that fade from memory when I wake up.

    Parts of them linger, though. An accusation that was hurled at me. A song someone else was singing.

    I think it means my unconscious mind is...bored? I haven't worked on anything new in a while, since I decided to focus on the novel edits. And as I near the end of the novel, those edits are becoming more re-phrasing and less re-writing. Less work for my imagination to do.

    So I wonder if that's why my dreams have suddenly become full-color 3D rousing soundtrack level productions. It's my unconscious saying "give me something new to work on!" while I keep saying "not yet."

    Because I do lean on my unconscious mind a lot when writing. Drafting or outlining, I'll often hit a wall, a place in the story where I'm not sure where to go, and I'll stop there for the day. Literally sleep on the problem, and come back the next day.

    Usually, by the time I return to the work, I've got a solution. My unconscious has chewed on the problem all night, and delivers it up to me when I need it.

    After...well, years...of working together like that, I'm wondering if my unconscious misses it. Even in the midst of a pandemic, even when I think (consciously) that I can't work on two things at once, it's saying "let's give it a shot."

    So I guess I will! I'll pick up the new story again, wrap up its outline, and start drafting.

    Or maybe even just dive into the drafting part, who knows? The outline's mostly done, and it's the writing itself that works out my unconscious the most.

    What about you? Do you rely on your unconscious mind for help in your writing? Has it ever sent you a message, like it seems to be doing to me?

    → 8:00 AM, Oct 2
  • Keeping Score: September 25, 2020

    I can't believe Breonna Taylor's killers are going to walk free.

    I mean, I can believe it, in the sense that racism is real and cops are killers and they're killers because they kill and get away with it in this country.

    But it's just...hard to grasp that after all we've been through, these United States, in 2020, a group of people could decide it's just fine to charge into the home of one of their fellow citizens and murder them, so long as the murderers are wearing badges.

    It's also hard for me to wrap my head around the President of the United States saying for months that the only election he could lose is a fraudulent one, and there's no howls of indignation from his side of the aisle. No Senators lining up to condemn his words and ask that the House open a new impeachment investigation.

    Nothing. Not a fucking peep.

    Meanwhile in my state, in supposedly progressive California, we still use inmates as firefighters, paying them perhaps a dollar a day, which is slave labor by any other name. And once they've served their time, if they happened to have been born somewhere else, we hand them over to ICE for deportation.

    Oh, and there's still a pandemic on, so walking around outside to enjoy the air newly-cleared of smoke and ash means constantly dodging people who aren't wearing masks.

    So it's all I can do right now, when I'm not doomscrolling, to keep editing the novel. One chapter at a time.

    I feel like I should be making more progress. Editing more than one chapter a day. Maybe even racing to the finish line.

    Or picking up the story I was outlining a few months ago, and starting to actually put words to paper.

    But I can't.

    I just...can't.

    The writing spirit is very willing, but the writing flesh, the meaty brain and hands that would summon words from the void, are quite busy right now.

    So I press on, one chapter at a time. I'm not stopping, but I'm not able to move any faster right now.

    Because this book's become even more important to me, lately.

    It's about prisons. It's about all the different kinds of people that get locked up, and why. It's about exploitation, and greed, and how it's all kept going by the people that look the other way. The ones that hold their noses so they can benefit.

    It's also about forgiveness, and change. About making yourself vulnerable again, after holding onto a hurt for so long.

    I want to finish it. I need to finish, to have this story told. To share it.

    There's not much else I can do, so I'm doing this.

    Voting. Donating. Speaking up.

    And writing.

    → 8:00 AM, Sep 25
  • Keeping Score: September 18, 2020

    I'm turning the editing corner, into the final third of the book.

    I'm a little nervous about this section. The middle edits were smooth sailing, but the closer I get to the end, the more things need to line up perfectly. I need to make sure threads are getting wrapped up, that I haven't skipped any scenes, that everything makes sense.

    I need to keep the whole novel in my head at this point, basically, in order to keep it all consistent through the end.

    And the end, of course, is the most complicated part of the book. It's where the main conflict gets resolved, via multiple timelines and a perspective shift.

    I hope it works. I hope I can hold it all together.

    Because if I can, if I do, then this round of edits will be finished. And I can start sending it out to beta readers, to finally get feedback from another pair of eyeballs than mine.

    And maybe, just maybe, have their reviews back in time to make final adjustments, and have it ready to send to agents by the end of the year.

    It is...a tight deadline. But we live in hope, don't we?

    → 8:00 AM, Sep 18
  • Keeping Score: September 11, 2020

    It struck me this morning that the pace at which I come up with new story ideas has slowed down.

    Time was I couldn't go a day without being struck by some story idea, and having to write it down.

    These days, I feel like all of my ideas are about the book or the story I'm currently working on. Nothing new, no bolts of lightning, just new ways of looking at the characters or the situation I'm already creating.

    And that made me nervous. Like, what if the well's run dry? What if once I finish these stories, that's it? Nothing else comes?

    To banish those thoughts, I remind myself of two things.

    First, it's a pandemic. Not to mention my state is currently on fire (the evidence of which is clearly visible in the sky outside my window). I'm allowed to feel a bit more stressed, and that means my brain isn't functioning at 100%.

    Second, it's okay to not be constantly throwing out new ideas. In fact, it's a good thing. Plowing my creative energy into what I'm working on, rather than dreaming up new work to take on, is exactly what I should be doing. The fact that my brain doesn't feel the need to go wandering for a new story to work on means this story's interesting and deep enough to keep it occupied.

    It's a positive sign, not a negative one. And it should be embraced.

    As for the novel itself, work continues. I'm still going through a chapter a day, giving myself the time to really look at each scene and fix the things that need fixing. A line of dialog that doesn't work. Some blocking that no longer makes sense.

    Okay, not everything. Some things I'm leaving for another pass.

    Like in the last chapter I edited, there's a shift in one character's dialog. They go from speaking somewhat formal English to a less-formal syntax. It's subtle, and it still sounds like the character, but it's there.

    I like the shift, and I think it's appropriate for the situation in that chapter. But in order to keep it, I need to go through and make sure that shift happens every time that situation comes up, so it feels deliberate, and not like a mistake.

    Alternatively, I could go through and make the character's dialog pattern the same everywhere. That might be easier, but I think there's something that will be lost if I do that. There's information encoded in the way they shift their speech according to who they're speaking to, and I'd hate to lose that.

    So yes, even as I go through this pass, I know I'm going to need to do another. But that next pass will be more focused, and thus faster, than this one. At least, that's the intent.

    What about you? When you do your editing, do you tackle everything in each pass? Or do you break it up into different read-throughs?

    → 8:00 AM, Sep 11
  • Keeping Score: September 4, 2020

    Is it bad to enjoy reading your own book?

    I'm still working on the novel, still plugging away at editing one chapter a day. It's about all I can do, given my schedule constraints.

    And so far, it's...not that bad?

    I mean, I'm probably filling in gaps that are there because I know the characters, I know the setting. But I was trying to write the equivalent of an action movie, and while I think I failed at that (there's not nearly enough stunts or fights in it to qualify), I think I did manage to produce a fast-paced, sci-fi, thriller.

    Each of the chapters are short -- the longest is maybe ten pages -- which makes them easier to edit, but also easier to read.

    And I've kept the language pretty tight, as well. Not always tight enough, hence the need for edits. And sometimes I wander off into describing a character's thoughts from the outside, inside of rendering them from the inside (it's a shift in point of view that I'm still learning how to handle properly). But overall, each scene starts, flows, and then ends without a lot of fat to trim.

    Which worries me, of course. What am I missing? What am I not seeing, that I need to fix?

    It reminds me of something the write C Robert Cargill tweets about a lot: That when you look at your work, and hate it, part of it is because of the difference between your skills and your taste. Your taste is likely far more sophisticated than your skills, starting out. You enjoy reading writers far better than you. And that's good! Your sophisticated taste is what lets you see the problems in your own work, which you can then fix.

    So I have to wonder: Has my taste declined? Have I been slacking in feeding it new works, so I can be critical of my own?

    Or am I just still too close to this book?

    Either way, I'm not upset at these chapters. They're not so horrible that I wouldn't want to show them to someone else.

    Which perhaps is good? And maybe the point of doing all these editing passes and rewrites. To get the book to a point where I think it's ready to be seen by other people.

    Flawed still, probably, yes. But good enough to go out to beta readers, and eventually (after more edits) agents. That should be the goal, right?

    And if I'm getting there, I should feel good about it. Not dread.

    Note to self: Stop feeling dread.

    → 8:00 AM, Sep 4
  • Keeping Score: August 28, 2020

    Made it through the intro chapters of the novel!

    I'm past the inciting event now, and heading into the chapters of the long middle.

    Most of the edits for these chapters, so far, have been small things. Removing some extra words here, adjusting the blocking of some characters there. I'm editing more to make things consistent than anything else. Haven't had to knocks wood do any major re-working of these.

    And thank goodness, because just as I turned the corner of the inciting event, I started to only have fifteen minutes a day to work on it.

    It's stress, more than anything else, but I've had some schedule shifts as well that have thrown me off. Made it hard to concentrate, to sink into the novel and see what's missing with what I've written.

    But the only way out is through, right? So I'm chugging along, working on it when I can, and trying to be patient. The work stress will pass, my schedule will get sorted, and I'll get back to spending more time on it each day.

    That's the hope, anyway.

    → 8:00 AM, Aug 28
  • Keeping Score: August 21, 2020

    I seem to always discover new things about the story while I'm writing it.

    It shouldn't surprise me anymore, but it does. Somehow, no matter how much time I spend thinking about and planning a scene, simply by writing it out, my brain will come up with new ideas and connections to other parts of the story.

    It's all good stuff, and I'm grateful, but it'd be a touch more convenient if I could think of these things while I'm outlining. That way, I wouldn't have to go back and revise other parts of the book to match the new things I've come up with while writing a scene.

    Don't get me wrong: the fact that I can come up with anything at all, instead of just staring at the screen like a deer caught in a truck's headlights, is fantastic.

    It's also just a tad bit annoying, sometimes.

    Which is to say: I’m making progress on the novel edits.

    Looping, patchwork, scattered progress, but progress all the same.

    Right now I’m trying to nail down the intro chapters, the first five or so. I want them to do quite a lot: Introduce the main character, and their (normal-day) problems, lay the ground work for a mystery that pops up later, orient the reader in the setting, introduce some antagonists, and make all that interesting enough so the inciting incident is worth sticking around for.

    Oh, and they’ve also got to setup the stakes for the inciting incident, have the incident itself, and then pave the way for those consequences to play out.

    It’s a heavy responsibility for those first chapters to carry. And before I started making these changes, they weren't quite up to it.

    But I think they can be! So long as I make the right changes.

    So that's what I've been working on this week, and will likely keep working on into next week.

    I feel a bit like a director on a movie, making changes to the set design between each take (and also changing the script. and the blocking. the actors hate me). I go in and add a machine there, change the readout on a display there, redirect the lighting over there, and then let the scene play out again. Or scratch a scene entirely and replace it with something new, in a new location.

    It's slow going, but it's fun! Kind of. Makes me grateful no one's had to read the earlier drafts. This one's going to be bad enough.

    → 8:30 AM, Aug 21
  • Keeping Score: August 14, 2020

    I'm rather upset with past me.

    Finally dove into editing the novel this week. Stopped procrastinating and worrying about the right way to do it, and just started doing it. Figured I'd look for inconsistencies, and touch up language or dialog along the way.

    And at first it worked! I chugged along, making small changes, trimming sentences here and there, for four whole chapters.

    But then I noticed something: The chapters I'd written (and edited, now for the third time) were all too short.

    I'd left out physical descriptions of the characters, so the reader had no guidance on what they looked like.

    I'd left out descriptions of the locations they were moving through, so the reader had no way to orient themselves in space.

    And I'd left out any discussion of how the characters should react to a crisis, so the reader had no idea of the alternatives, or how bad the crisis really was.

    I could tell all this, for the first time, because the reader was me.

    I don't mean that I was literally lost in my own novel. Thank goodness, no, I still knew where everything was, and what everything looks like.

    But I'd had enough time off from the book to approach it like a reader. And I've recently read some books that had a quick pace and an interesting plot but never gave me enough time to get oriented in the world, so I always felt a little confused.

    Both things that let me recognize it when it started happening in my own book.

    So this editing pass -- draft number three, for those keeping score at home -- is turning out to be a "filling in the gaps" pass. Expanding conversations so each character's whole train of thought is present (or at least enough for the reader to make the tiny leaps required). Spending more time in a space before the plot pushes us out of it, so I can give the reader something to visualize.

    Thankfully I've been thinking about all of these things for two years now (or three? is it three years?) so I can fill in the gaps when I spot them. But even as I fill in the gaps, I know I'm creating more work for myself. Because each of those filled gaps is now a first draft, and will need to be revised again (and again) before it's ready to go out.

    So thanks, past me. You keep the plot humming along, but you forgot to lay down all the sign posts along the way.

    → 8:00 AM, Aug 14
  • Keeping Score: August 7, 2020

    I need to get back to working on the novel.

    I've let it sit these past few weeks, untouched, while I finished getting one short story into shape and started plotting a new one.

    But if I'm going to meet my personal deadline of having the novel ready to submit to agents by December 1st, I'm going to need to edit this second draft.

    To be honest, I'm intimidated. I've never edited anything this long before.

    How do I even do it? Read it all through, and then go back and edit passages? That sounds...like it'll take forever.

    Or do I work chapter by chapter, editing each one until it's done, and then moving on? That sounds like an easy way to lose sight of inconsistencies (or to having to go back and edit previous chapters anyway, as inconsistencies show up).

    I think what I'm going to do is a series of editing passes. Pick one thing to look for -- like the consistency of a single character's dialog -- and edit all instances of that. Then pick something else -- the descriptions of a ship, say -- and edit all of those.

    I'm hoping this will give me a structure in which to do multiple reads over the book, without getting lost in the weeds of any individual chapter. And it should broaden my perspective so I can stitch the book together, so to speak, with these edits. Make it more coherent, more whole.

    But what do I do with the short story I've been outlining? I don't want to lose momentum on that. And I worry that the novel, once I start editing it, will take up all the room in my brain for narrative.

    I want to work on both. Use the story as a break from the novel, and use the novel as a break from the story. They're different enough -- one's near-future sci-fi, the other is early modern period fantasy -- that I should be able to keep them separate in my head. And editing is different enough from drafting that I'll be exercising different writing muscles with each.

    What about you? What do you do, when you've got a longer piece to edit and a shorter one to draft? Do you alternate working days? Finish the shorter piece before editing the longer? How do you handle two stories that both need your attention?

    → 8:00 AM, Aug 7
  • Keeping Score: July 10, 2020

    Missed last week's Keeping Score, but for a good reason: I was wrapping up the second draft of the novel!

    I set down the final words in the last chapter later that weekend. It's done!

    Or rather, the current draft is done. I've still got some editing passes to do: for consistency, for character dialog, for general polish.

    But this draft, which started out as minor edits and grew to become pretty much a rewrite, is finished. As part of that rewrite, it's grown, from 70K to 80K.

    Ditto the rewrite I was doing for the short story, which I also wrapped up last week. The story's grown from a 3,000-word piece to something north of 8,000 words! Some of those might get cut away in editing, but it'll still end up more than twice as long as it was before. I had no idea there was so much story left to tell with that one, until I tried to tell it.

    With two project drafts done, I've mostly taken this week off. I need the space for the novel to cool off so I can approach the edits with an objective eye. I might leave that one untouched for a month or so, just to get some distance.

    For the short story, I think I'll start editing it this week. At least an initial pass for consistency and word choice, before sending it off to beta readers. Once I get their feedback, I'll make further edits, to get it into shape for submission.

    Meanwhile, I've started brainstorming a short story idea I had a while back. Everything's still vague now, but it's about dragons, and mentors, and loss. I'm excited to see how it shapes up!

    → 8:00 AM, Jul 10
  • Keeping Score: June 26, 2020

    It's been a struggle to write this week.

    My uncle -- who because of age and circumstances was more like my grandfather, so I called him Pop -- died on Father's Day. And I've been living and working under a shadow ever since.

    Hard enough to lose him. Harder still, because I couldn't make the trip out to Texas for his funeral, because of the pandemic.

    He's gone, but I didn't get to say goodbye.

    So I've been soldiering on. Writing a paragraph or two, at least, every day.

    But each word is a struggle. And if I stop and think about anything for too long, my mind drifts back to losing Pop, and I come undone for a while.

    Stay safe out there, folks. Wear your masks. Wash your hands.

    Write what you can, when you can.

    → 8:00 AM, Jun 26
  • Keeping Score: June 5, 2020

    How does one write, in times like these?

    I feel guilty for not being at the protests (my wife and I are both at high-risk for covid-19). For not being and doing more, both now and in the past.

    I can make changes going forward. Donate to Black Lives Matter and to Bailout Funds. Push locally for police reform. Vote for candidates that will hold our police accountable.

    But where does writing fit into that? How can I justify spending time...just, writing stories?

    Because I have kept writing, even as the police have tear-gassed my old neighborhood. As helicopters fly overhead, towards the next showdown between the people and the "heroes" that are supposed to keep them safe.

    On the one hand, I write because writing is my escape. A way for me to tune out the world for a bit, and come back to it ready to rejoin the struggle.

    On the other hand, I write because writing is a form of activism.

    When we read, we can enter the mind of a character completely. See the world entirely through their lives. Cry with them, when the world throws them down. Shout with joy when they triumph over those who would hold them back.

    We can build empathy with people and situations we never thought we could. We can also see the dark sides of our own selves, when thoughts and habits of our own are cast in a different light, or shown to us from someone else's perspective.

    So I write to escape, yes. But also to create something that can change someone's mind.

    It's not as fast as signing a petition, true. Or joining a protest. Or calling a government official pressuring them to be better. Which is why I will continue to do all those other things.

    But I will also write.

    → 8:00 AM, Jun 5
  • Keeping Score: May 29, 2020

    Earlier this week, I was on a Zoom call with some fellow writers. We were discussing how our writing output was doing during the pandemic: whether it was fine or (for most of us) had gone down.

    And I realized: I've basically retooled my entire process during these last few months.

    I used to write mostly on evenings and weekends, but now I do it in the morning, before the day even starts.

    I used to write in blocks of a few hours at a time.

    Now I do it in short thirty-minute bites.

    I used to write a scene or a story straight through, from start to finish.

    Now I jump around, filling in sections a little bit at a time, and then join them up later.

    And the biggest change of all: I used to mostly pants my stories, but now I'm doing a lot of plotting and outlining before I set anything down.

    Will it last once we're able to leave our homes safely? Who knows?

    I might go back to the old way of writing. I might never be able to write that way again.

    But it amazes me all the same, that little by little, my process has changed so much, in so short a time.

    What about you? Has your process stayed the same through the pandemic? Or have you had to re-learn how to make your art, in order to keep working?

    → 8:00 AM, May 29
  • Keeping Score: May 22, 2020

    After two good weeks in a row, it was time for a rough one.

    Had to shift my schedule up by three hours this week, for work. Well, I say shift my schedule, but...there's no way I'm going through my normal morning routine (writing, walking) at 4:30 in the morning.

    So it's more like I abandoned my schedule, and then jet-lagged myself (while staying at home!).

    As you can imagine, my writing output has suffered.

    But it hasn't ground to a halt! I've managed to keep the writing streak alive, carving out time after work (thank the gods for afternoon naps) to make progress on both the novel and the short story, again on altering days.

    Not always much progress, mind you. Several days "just get one sentence down" wasn't just a trick to get me to write, it was all I could get down.

    But I did it, and I'm through to the other side, and can catch-up on sleep and (writing) work this weekend.

    And reading. Surprisingly hard to read when your body is in the wrong timezone.

    What about you? Have you settled into a new routine, and managed to keep with it? Or have the re-openings, patchwork as they are, disrupted the schedule you built during lockdown?

    → 8:00 AM, May 22
  • Keeping Score: May 15, 2020

    Current writing streak: 64 days.

    Finally reached the part of the novel where I'm back to editing, instead of writing new chapters. It's made things easier going, on that front. Less intimidating to sit down with words already on the page, and know I've just got to make them consistent with everything else.

    There's a few chapters at the very end where I'll need to be drafting from scratch again, but for now, at least, it's smoother sailing.

    Of course, this won't be the end of my editing passes. I'll need to do at least one more of what I'm thinking of as "consistency passes" to check all the new material against what's already there. Then I'm planning on doing a dialog pass for each main character, to ensure they speak consistently throughout. Finally I'll do a phrase and copy-editing pass, looking for awkward wording or cliché description.

    So still plenty to do.

    I've also continued to work on the short story on alternate days this week. I wasn't sure I was ready to start writing the new section of that work, to be honest, but by focusing on just one little detail at a time -- Anne Lamott's one-inch frame technique -- I've managed to add ~1,000 words to the draft. If I keep this up, I might actually have the draft done (and ready to set aside, for later editing) next week.

    Which would be...amazing. I wasn't sure I could ever get back to some sort of functioning writing schedule during the pandemic. Or get back to writing more than just a sentence or two a day. But something's happened recently, like a mental fog has lifted. I'm able to brainstorm again, and hold both of these storylines (the story and the novel) in my head again, and write a page a day again.

    It may not last. I'm going to appreciate it while it does, though. I know not everyone has been as relatively fortunate as I have through this pandemic.

    So I'm grateful, for the work I can do, while I can do it.

    How about you? Have you felt like you've turned a corner lately? Or are things still too much in the air for your writing brain to settle into some kind of routine?

    → 8:00 AM, May 15
  • Keeping Score: May 8, 2020

    The streak's alive! I've managed at least 30 minutes of writing for 57 days straight now.

    Alternating the days I work on the novel with the days I work on the short story seems to help, too.

    I've even started tracking my daily word count again, when working on the novel. I don't let myself stop writing until I hit 250 words.

    As a result, I've made notable progress on it. Finished three new chapters, and I'm ready to start editing down the next few.

    And for the short story, I'm gathering notes on my research and getting plot points nailed down. This weekend (or early next week) I think I'll be ready to start writing some dialog, and then gradually fill in the rest.

    Oh, and I have three other pieces submitted to paying markets. Keeping in the habit of sending them right back out a few days after a rejection comes in.

    So this week has been good, relatively speaking. Still not operating at 100%, creatively, but I'm finding a new normal, a new pace of working to make a habit.

    What about you?

    → 8:00 AM, May 8
  • Keeping Score: May 1, 2020

    Current writing streak: 50 days.

    50 days! That's 50 consecutive days of working, bit by bit, on the novel, several short stories, and essays for the blog.

    50 days of laying bricks, one at a time. Of sending out stories and getting rejections. Of wrestling with file formats, and Scrivener settings, all to conform to the particular submission guidelines of each market (sometimes "always follow the directions" is hard advice to hold to).

    50 days of shoving the pandemic out of my mind for at least thirty minutes, each day, to go visit somewhere else in my imagination. A dearly needed mental vacation.

    So, what's new this week?

    I've taken up the habit of alternating days in which I'm working on the novel with days where I work on something else. It's a way of giving me a break from the general slog of the book without going too long without thinking about it. And it lets me make progress on some other projects.

    Like the short story I started submitting to markets...two weeks ago? One of the rejections I got resonated with me. It took a while, but eventually that resonation joined up with some things my beta readers said, and crystallized this week into me thinking up a different ending for it.

    The new ending changes the meaning of the piece. Shifts its emphasis. But I think it's stronger, and more cohesive with the rest of the story. And it adds a little bit of just desserts for one of the characters.

    So I'm going to give it a shot.

    I say "give it a shot" quite deliberately. It might flop. It might make the story worse, not better. I might fail to execute properly. Any of which would mean I'd go back to sending it out with the original ending.

    But I'd like to try, so I've been using my alternate days this week to brainstorm and outline the new ending. Sketch out scenes, decide sticky plot points, nail down questions that arise as I think it through.

    It's a different way of working for me -- usually I just throw down the short story, outline be damned -- and it's slower, but I'd like to be more deliberate in the way I craft things. I feel like the more plot holes I can fill during the outlining, the smoother the actual writing process will go. It should let me focus on the writing itself, because I've thought through the action and character beats already.

    We'll see. Wish me luck.

    → 8:00 AM, May 1
  • Spotlight on Local Author: Henry Herz

    Intro

    Henry Herz intimidates me.

    He's written and sold ten children's books, along with numerous short stories, and he's one of the few writers Jonathan Maberry trusts to run the Writers Coffeehouse when he can't host it himself.

    Did I mention he frequently runs panels for Comic-Con and WonderCon? And that he edited an anthology that includes stories from Peter S Beagle, Jane Yolen, and Jim Butcher?

    Thankfully, he's as friendly and approachable as he is super-organized (more on that later). He recently spent some time with me over Zoom to talk about his writing process, children's book publishing, and his dive into the world of middle-grade novels.

    Writing Process

    What is your writing process like for a picture book? With something that short, does pantsing vs plotting come into play?

    I'm a plotter by nature, and because of my background in industrial engineering, I don't like wasting time. For me, being a plotter is more efficient than being a pantser because I don't write myself into corners.

    But it's an artistic endeavor, and it may be that someone who loves to be a pantser can't plot. They would actually be slower, so every writer must discover what works best for them.

    For a picture book, there's usually 13 to 14 two-page spreads, so I'll just do an outline to show what I want to have on each of these spreads. Then I can look at everything and go, "Okay, do I have rising tension? Do I establish the problem in the first one or two spreads? Do I have a resolution about three-quarters of the way through?" And that's easy to check. Then I can draft each of the pages and go from there.

    With a picture book, you could easily get away with pantsing, because the word count is so low. And picture books typically go through a lot more revisions than a novel.

    Really?

    Well, how many passes are you going to make through a novel, realistically?

    Three or four. Maybe.

    Yeah, exactly. I have picture books that have gone through 25 revisions, but that just means me making a pass and making changes and tightening things up, or me soliciting feedback from critique group members and integrating the feedback that I think is constructive.

    How does your writing process change for a short story or novel vs a picture book?

    So I'm organized in both cases, but I'm a lot more organized for the novel or the short story, because it's a bigger word count. I just feel like I'd be flailing if I pantsed a novel. I would be very likely to write myself into corners or spend too much time in one area.

    I found a resource that I really like. It's called Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, by Jess Brody. There was originally a book by Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!, which analyzed how movies are structured, and Jessica Brody took the same idea and applied it to novels.

    So her book gives you a template, a starting point, which was invaluable to me, since I've only written one novel. I used her structure for that novel and about half-a-dozen short stories in the 3,000 to 6,000 word range.

    It guarantees you have the arc that you want. The character development is still obviously up to you, but it helps with the pacing and the arcs.

    There's also a great resource for character development, the book that Jonathan Maberry always touts, which is the Writing the Breakout Novel Handbook, by Donald Maass. There's a bunch of questions in there that help you understand your own characters.

    In my idealized process for writing a novel, I start with a rough idea of the story just in my head through inspiration, but then I flesh out the characters using the Donald Maass workbook, and then I come up with an overview and story beats from Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.

    And that helps chunk it down, because I'm a picture book writer used to writing 500-word books. The first novel, the first and only novel I've written, is a 30,000-word middle-grade novel. 30,000 words is intimidating to somebody who's only written 500. If you're an adult novelist, you're like, "Pfft. I do 100,000 words all the time. It's no big deal." But for me, it was a lot.

    So staring at a blank document that I know will have to contain 30,000 words is pretty intimidating. But if I use the Save the Cat template, then the writing is broken down into anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand word chunks, and that makes it much easier. "Okay, I know how to write that. I don't know how to write the whole thing, but I know how to write this little piece."

    Like the parable about how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

    What does your novel outline look like?

    Jess Brody breaks the novel up into about 15 beats.

    Beats like "The Opening Image", "The Theme Stated", "The Set Up", and then there's "The Catalyst". Then you break into Act II.

    So having a couple of sentences about each of these beats, it gets me far enough to start writing.

    So you had all the beats mapped out first? Or did you map out a beat, write it up, then map out the next beat, etc?

    I map out all the beats up front, before I start writing.

    Only somebody as ridiculously organized as me would pay attention to this, but Save the Cat Writes a Novel suggests roughly what percentage of the word count should be in each beat. Obviously, you fiddle with it. But that really helps me.

    For example, The Opening Image, I think, is 1%. It's just an opening image, right? So if I have a 30,000-word novel, then I know, "Okay, I have about 300 words to play with." Now, they're not strict limits, but it tells me what I'm aiming at. There is a big difference between writing 300 and 3,000 words.

    I find it helps with the pacing, to make sure that things are happening at the right times, and that there are head-fakes, that you're moving in a direction and something shifts. You're building tension, and then you ramp it up even more. It's just helpful. I know Jonathan [Maberry] has done this so many times that it's instinct for him, but since this is my first novel, it was really helpful to have a tool.

    How do you go about building a scene in your head? Do you think cinematically, or...?

    Let's take Stephen King's novel, Carrie.

    So if I was writing Carrie, and I'm doing the opening scene, how do I want to set the stage? Would I want to have Carrie in her room levitating something, or would I want to have Carrie in the high school locker room getting picked on by the other girls?

    But once I made that decision, then I would envision the scene in my head. "Okay, what's going on? Who's going to say what?" Make sure that the dialogue and the action is consistent with what the characters want.

    In the end, these are stories about characters, so you always have to make sure that you're being true to those characters.

    I probably pants that more in that I have a general idea of what the character's like, but I let the character's voice emerge as I'm writing as opposed to having it all worked out ahead of time.

    I can think, "Okay, this character is smart but a little self-centered, has a good sense of humor, mouths off in class when they shouldn't." And then having those rough guidelines, then I can let the character's personality take shape, let it flesh out as I'm writing.

    Do you use beta readers? Or maybe a critique group?

    I'm a member of a group here locally that I like. It's some experienced writers, and we do 3,500 words a week that we share and critique. I got through my novel in nine sessions, nine weeks, which feels slow to me as a picture book writer, but I know as a novelist that's pretty fast to get detailed feedback from multiple people on your novel.

    Do you all email out your selection to each other?

    So this group uses Dropbox to pass out the pieces and then to give feedback. But then we were meeting face-to-face on a weekly basis until coronavirus, and now we're doing it all through Dropbox. Just sharing marked up versions of the manuscripts.

    No Zoom meetings where you read aloud something and critique it?

    No, that would take too long also to read aloud. 3,500 words times five people, that'd be a long meeting.

    Oh, it's 3,500 each for each person, so each week you're reading 15,000 words or more?

    Yeah, but it's a lot easier to read and critique somebody else's stuff than to write 15,000 words.

    Fair enough. To get back to the critiquing real quick, how hard is it for you to switch between the draft brain and the editing brain?

    Oh, for my own stuff? Very easy, very easy, because I draft until I have a complete draft, so I'm not context-switching on a daily basis. I'm drafting, drafting, drafting, drafting until I have a draft completed, and then I switch to revision mode.

    Some people edit as they draft. I'm guilty of that too. But I try to discourage myself because it is important to get that first draft out.

    But with short stories, I allow myself to edit as I go. That also means that when I'm done, the first draft is tight.

    The last three I short stories I wrote, I was ready to submit after version two. One revision pass, and I was ready to go, because I had been editing them as I typed them in. So they were close to finished in the first draft. Then it's just a matter of polishing.

    When you get feedback from your critique group, do you always make the changes they suggest?

    It's a good question, and the answer depends on context. Sometimes I just get, "Hey, this isn't working," and sometimes I get, "Hey, this isn't working. Have you thought about this?"

    And I will consider what they say, but I'm not feeling bound to do it. My choices are reject it completely, do nothing, accept it as is, or accept that there's a problem, but fix it a different way. Any of those are possible. It just depends on the situation.

    I don't feel constrained by a critiquer's proposed solution, but I'm happy to hear it. The suggestion might be really good, or it might prompt me to go, "That's a good point, although that won't work because of something the reader isn't aware of," but it gets my brain spinning. "Okay, yeah. I do need to address that, and I know how to do that. I've got to go back a couple of chapters and plant something so that I foreshadow that."

    Publishing

    Have all your picture books earned out?

    No. Some of them have, some of them haven't.

    Oh. Is that hard to do for a picture book? I guess it depends on the level of advance.

    Yes, it depends on the level of advance, and it also depends on how much effort the publisher puts in.

    Because there's an 80/20 rule that applies to a lot of things, and I think it also applies to how publishers market their books. I think 80% of their marketing budget gets focused on 20% of their books that they have a really good feeling about. These are their top authors, proven authors with good track records, who get the lion's share of the marketing budget.

    I've sold 10 picture books, but I am nowhere near the top of the field, not even close. I get a modest amount of help marketing-wise. They solicit professional reviews, and they put it on their website, and they do the things they do for everybody, but it's not like they're paying for me to go on a tour around the country.

    I'd say the most critical thing is can they get your book in Barnes & Noble, because that's the biggest chain.

    And they can't always do that. Just because a traditional publisher produces a book, it doesn't mean Barnes & Noble will take it. They have finite space, and they're going to pick the books they think will sell the best. It's perfectly logical from a business perspective, but it sucks if you're not a well-known author.

    Do you have an agent?

    I don't have an agent currently, and I think the novel is a good opportunity for me to approach agents, because there's a lot more picture book manuscripts floating around than novel manuscripts floating around in children's literature, I think.

    And if an agent likes my middle grade novel, then I can say, "By the way, I also have a number of picture book manuscripts."

    Some agents specialize in picture books. A lot of them skip them, because unless you're at the top of the field, the advances for picture books are small, and the agency gets 15%. The agent gets less than that if they're not the owner of the agency.

    So imagine seven-and-a-half percent of a $4,000 dollar advance. That's not a lot of money for a picture book agent. $300 isn't going to pay the rent.

    I'm hoping that this will increase my appeal because now I'm a dual threat, I can write picture books and I can write novels.

    Do you have a list of agents already in mind for the middle-grade?

    I have a list of agents who I like for picture books, and what I'll probably do is go through that, because I want somebody who works for a reputable agency and somebody who's interested in the same genres.

    You have to align with what the agent is interested in reading, and I tend to write a lot of science fiction and fantasy.

    So I will start with my list of picture book agents and go through them again, and go, "Okay, does this agent also represent middle-grade," and if they do, then "do they like fantasy and sci-fi?"

    How do you feel your background in process improvement engineering helps you with your writing?

    It doesn't help me with writing, but it helps me with my career in terms of being organized and being efficient about all the non-writing things that I have to do: submitting, soliciting an agent, and tracking when markets are open that you can submit to. And what you sent and whether you've heard back or not.

    If you're being active, you could easily just drown in all the data. If you don't use a spreadsheet or something to manage it, you'll just completely lose track of what you're doing. I'm a pretty prolific writer, so I have to do that.

    How do you keep track of it all?

    For my picture books I have a spreadsheet. The columns represent the different manuscripts, and the rows are for the different publishers.

    For each cell, there's really two dates, when I submitted it and when I heard back, either a rejection or an acceptance.

    So that's a helpful thing to have, because then you know who've you sent to. I can put notes in there too, like if they rejected but they gave me some feedback, then I can stuff that in there as well.

    And then I do something similar for my short stories, which are submitted to online magazines, print magazines, and anthologies.

    Has your system evolved over time?

    I didn't used to have that spreadsheet. I used to just have the Evernote list, organized by market.

    For example, I scroll down past Amazing Stories, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies to Clarkesworld. I can see that I submitted ABC to Clarkesworld on this date. It was declined or accepted on that date. So under each market, I list every one of the stories I've submitted. I may also list stories I'm planning to submit.

    But many of these markets don't accept multiple or simultaneous submissions. That makes it really hard to know at a glance "Can I submit there? Where else have I submitted that story?"

    That's when I built a short story spreadsheet, where each row is a story and each column is a market. That format makes it easy to see at a glance where I've submitted it, and where I might submit it. You can use color-coding to show which markets allow simultaneous submissions and which ones don't.

    I want to push my writing out into the world. There are some markets that will give you a fast response, within a few days. But most of them, it's weeks or months. I think, "Okay, which one do I want to send to in what order, and if I send there, that means I can't send it over to these other markets until I hear back."

    So it's like a three-dimensional chess match. I've found that I needed the spreadsheet just to retain my sanity and get these stories out in as expeditious a manner as possible, get responses, and then if it's a no, move on to the next market.

    Field Trip to Earth

    Why go for a middle-grade novel after having written and successfully published so many picture books?

    I've been published more than once in the picture book market, but writing a middle-grade novel makes sense for a couple of reasons. First is career-wise, it's better to be able to write in more than one market. But also, when you're writing picture books, your vocabulary is tied behind your back. You're writing for young readers, and are constrained by what words you can use and what concepts you can cover.

    You also have to very carefully leave room for the illustrator, because picture books, at roughly 500 words, don't give you word count to describe the scenes. You have to leave room for the illustrator to do a lot of the scene description.

    Writing middle grade lets me use my full vocabulary and describe scenes and incorporate motivations that are too mature for a picture book. So writing for older markets supports both self-expression and career growth.

    I chose middle-grade as opposed to young adult or adult, because I'm also being practical. I've written a number of picture books of anywhere from 500 to 1,000 words. I sold an early chapter book, which was 6,500 words, so that was a step up. But nothing longer than that.

    I thought, "I don't want to jump to a 100,000-word epic fantasy. That's just a bridge too far. Middle-grade novels can be as short as 30,000 words.

    I figured I would hone my novel writing chops by writing a shorter novel.

    It's also closer in tone to picture books than an adult novel would be.

    So, what's the novel about? What genre is it in?

    The middle-grade novel is science fiction with a good dose of humor.

    It's called Field Trip to Earth, and it's basically an alien middle school student finds herself in academic trouble, and she needs to take an unauthorized field trip to Earth to collect data for her school report.

    Some of her friends go with her, and hijinks ensue.

    That sounds great.

    It's been fun to write. Soon I expect to be done with my second full pass, and then at that point, I'm going to throw it out there and see if an agent wants it.

    Have you gotten any feedback that made you completely rewrite part of it?

    Partially. So in my sci-fi novel, the main character is a middle-school kid from Proxima Centauri.

    And she realizes she needs to go to Earth. Now, she has attended driver's ed, so she knows how to fly a spaceship, but she doesn't own one.

    In my original version, after school ends, she basically hijacks a school vehicle and flies it to Earth.

    I got feedback from more than one person saying, "That's a little too dark. It offers a behavior that's not one parents would want to encourage in their kids." I can't pull off what Eoin Colfer did with Artemis Fowl.

    So instead, she has a nemesis at school. Now, the nemesis is wealthy and has his own ship, so she enlists his cooperation into doing the trip.

    Oh, that's a neat solution

    Another piece of feedback: In my early version, the two of them would have verbal sparring, and the nemesis was a different species and chubby.

    I had my protagonist teasing him about his size and his eating habits. The feedback I got was, "Your protagonist is being kind of a bully there."

    Even though it was in reaction to the nemesis' actions, my protagonist's responses felt too mean and bullying. So I toned that down.

    Those weren't complete rewrites, but they definitely were significant changes to the character and for one plot element. But that's the idea, right? I'm making it better.

    Definitely. When making those changes, did you revise the outline first, and then the text?

    No, because the structure is still solid. I don't need to change the structure. The beats are the beats.

    In the way that I am operating, following the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel structure, the beats come in a specific order, and the relative size of those beats is unchanged. I just go into the individual chapters and tweak what I need to tweak to make the desired changes.

    I don't have to rewrite the whole thing. I may have to insert pieces that I needed to set the stage in an earlier scene, but that's it.

    → 8:00 AM, Apr 27
  • Keeping Score: April 17, 2020

    Another week. I've kept the writing streak going; currently at 36 straight days.

    Managed to pick up work on the novel again. I worried I might not be able to get back in the headspace that easily. But it turns out if you've worked on something for two years, you can dive back into it without too many issues :)

    Had to think back through the chapter I was working on, though. The plot I'd had when I last put it down didn't fit with the setting I'd established, and -- to be perfectly honest -- wasn't that interesting.

    This new version I'm writing is harder, emotionally, but it's better.

    Which seems to be true about a lot of the rewrites I do. The ones that are harder for me to write, to push my characters through, are the ones that make the story shine.

    I'm keeping my daily goals modest, though. Sketch out a conversation here, set down a turning point over there, and that's it. Slowly stitch it all together over the course of the week. Review it -- but don't edit it yet! -- and mark the progress made.

    It's these little steps, little victories, that keep me going.

    What about you?

    → 8:00 AM, Apr 17
  • Spotlight on Local Author: J Dianne Dotson

    I won't be shy about admitting this: Dianne's one of my personal heroes.

    A trained scientist, turned science writer, and now indie publisher, Dianne's one of those people that makes me wonder how they find the time for it all.

    Did I mention she also has two kids, did a cross-country tour to promote her books, and was on a panel with Cory Doctorow at Wondercon last year?

    Dianne was kind enough to take some time -- over Skype, given current circumstances -- to talk with me about her writing process, going indie, and what's it like to work on one long story for thirty years.

    The first two books -- Heliopause and Ephemeris -- in her Questrison Saga are out now, and the third's on its way soon.

    Writing Process

    Let's start with your writing process. Are you a pantser or a plotter?

    I would say that everything is in my head. I already know what's happening. I basically just sit down and write it out. I don't really follow an incredibly structured situation, I just write it. Things can come up as I write that influence where I think things might go and the characters have minds of their own. They might do things I didn't expect.

    But I don't do outlines.

    What about editing? Do you do multiple editing passes or do you do everything in one big push?

    For the most part, I will go through the book and I will do my first pass, and then I'll go back and do it again.

    Then I hand it off to beta readers.

    Then the beta reader feedback, I get back. If there need to be edits or anything expanded upon, then I incorporate that. I read through it again.

    Then at that point, I need to hand it off to the editor.

    Do you mind going into a little more detail about your editing passes? I know some writers will break it up, so first they do a dialogue pass, then a consistency pass, etc

    No, I just go through it all. It's just in literal order, line by line, chapter by chapter to the end, and I fix things as I go.

    Do you take any time between writing a draft and then doing the edit?

    I don't like to, because I feel the fire. I feel like I want to get this done. That's very much a "me" thing. I'm very much like that. Once I finish something, I want to make sure it's really, really done. I can't stand waiting on stuff like that. I tend to just jump right in.

    Do you give any guidance to your beta readers?

    Well, I don't like to frame things for them in advance. I do it more after they read. I do ask them, I say, "Hey, if you see anything blatant, let me know. If you have any questions, let me know." I keep it simple.

    After they're done, that's when I really ask them the questions, because then they read it. That's what I want to know about, as a reader, what worked for you, what didn't work? I'll ask things like, "Who is your favorite character? What made you laugh? What made you cry?" Different things like that. "Do you think that this particular passage worked?"

    Do you do an editing pass per beta reader?

    No, because they're finishing at varying times. I thought, well, I want to ask my questions now that it's fresh on their mind, they just read it. Then because of that, then I'll go ahead and incorporate right after that, their feedback, if I felt that it merited changing.

    Not everything does. In some cases, I've had to say, no, this is the way it is supposed to be.

    You have a lot of really strong characters in your books. Are those based on real people?

    Some of them are.

    Sumond, the alien chef in Ephemeris, I based on this chef that I knew from San Francisco from when my brother lived there in the early '90s. This guy, this chef was hilarious. He had been an opera singer. That's where Sumond comes from.

    Or take Troy in Heliopause. We all know Troy. He's a lounge lizard kind of a guy. He's loosely based off some people I know and he's named after my dad's cousin, Troy, who was more like an uncle to me than a cousin. It's a little bit of family nod there.

    Then who else? Let's see. Even Veronica is influenced a little bit by people I know. I won't say who.

    Everybody's got a little bit of influence from here and there, but nobody's an outright translation now.

    Aeriod, though, is full-clothed from a dream that I had as a young teen.

    Wait, what?

    I dreamed that this alien Brit rocker had taken me up in basically a boat with some friends of mine up to this island in the sky, this land that he had with palaces. He showed me around and he talked to me.

    There are some direct lines in Ephemeris from that dream, when Galla is dreaming about Aeriod showing her around. That dream was my dream.

    Aeriod was just straight out of my head like somebody I knew. He seems very real to me. That's one reason I guess people say he's complex. It's because he's been in my head this whole time.

    Does that happen often? You dream of characters for your stories?

    I have very vivid dreams, and sometimes they do lend themselves to stories.

    In fact, the first little scenes of Forster in Heliopause, where he's walking along the soft floors with the dim lights, that's from a dream.

    I had already made his descendant, Kein, but Forster himself I dreamed separately later. It's funny.

    Indie Publishing

    You're publishing the Questrison Saga yourself, rather than go through a traditional publisher. Why go indie?

    When I had worked on this for so long and then didn't really know what to do after that, I knew I should submit to a publisher. I realized that, oh, you can't really do that anymore, that there's a gateway to publication and it's called a literary agent.

    That was about 2017, around the time that I started going regularly to the Writers Coffeehouse at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. I was going to get an idea of what I needed to do.

    I started there and I queried quite a few agents. I got some bites.

    At the end of it, there were four that I came very close to using.

    One of them turned out to be a shyster.

    The other one was just really sitting on it, and sitting on it, and not getting back to me.

    The third one had a very strange reaction to it. She's like, "I think it has too many characters," but then she kept going back to read it. I'm like, "Just make a decision." What's the decision? She couldn't make one.

    Then the fourth one, I really hit it off with, and she had loved the samples that I had sent her. She read the whole book. But she actually wanted me to kill more people than I was ready to kill at that time.

    That was when I decided: I don't want to do this anymore. It's my story. I'm going to tell it the way I want it. I've had it in my head for years.

    I can write other stories and submit to this process all over again, they won't matter as much to me. This particular one, I'm doing myself.

    Plus, I was uniquely positioned in a time in which you could make a really good quality independently published book by having professionals do the covers and having professionals edit it.

    When you set it side by side with a traditionally published book you can't tell, that was the goal. That was accomplished.

    Would you do it again?

    I will not do this again, because it is a lot of work. It is expensive. You are the publisher, the agent, the promoter, and all these other things when you're still a writer.

    If you're taking a lot of time to promote this book yourself, that's time taken away from your writing. Even though I'm a very fast writer, it can be exhausting to keep on top of it.

    I still feel that it was the right decision for this series.

    But for everything else I'm doing, I will submit to traditional publishing.

    How much did it cost you to produce Book One? Was it any cheaper to finish Book Two?

    About the same. It is actually a little bit more expensive for Book Two because the editing, it was bigger book.

    Do you mind talking about those costs?

    I don't remember exactly all the costs. For the first editor of Book One I think was $1,200 and then the copy, the final proof was mostly $600, the art was $600, and then I actually had to buy the books myself from IngramSpark to be able to supply to bookstores and to conventions. That's a significant expense.

    Advertising, promotional materials, posters, everything ranging from postcards to business cards to just all kinds of stuff, it was a few thousand at the end of the day.

    Have you made that back?

    I have made it back for Book One.

    I have not made it back for Book Two, I don't think. Not yet.

    I think what was interesting was that the minute Book Two came out, more people bought Book One. I think people just like a series.

    How did you find all the people that you've ended up working with: the editors, the artists, the graphics people, and the web designers?

    Well, everything about this process has been throw something at the wall and see if it sticks, literally. Because I didn't know what the heck I was getting myself into, piecemealing it, but I figured it out.

    I got the website going first. For that, I had gone through a couple of web design people and logo designers.

    I ended up asking a food and lifestyle blogger, Michael Wurm Jr., who runs "Inspired By Charm", because he had a really sleek website. He gave me the contact information for Dash Creative. That's who I've used the last couple of years.

    In terms of the editing, I had gone to San Diego Writers Ink. They had a class on book publishing.

    The woman who hosted the class, Laurie Gibson, said she was also an editor and so I contacted her after I'd finished the draft of Heliopause. That's how I met my main editor.

    Then through her, I met Lisa Wolf who did the proof edit who is actually the editor for Book Three.

    It's a chain of contacts, basically. My cover designer was a parent at my kids' school and he knew the artist, Leon Tukker. That's how that happened.

    Can you talk about distribution? I think you mentioned you use IngramSpark?

    IngramSpark prints and distributes most of the books that you see.

    When I upload a book and it's ready to go and I purchase the option for both paperback and eBook, they upload it to everywhere: Kobo, Amazon, Google Books.

    They do all that and they also put the links up all across the world on various international bookseller websites.

    I chose Ingram because of its reputation, it's worldwide distribution, and the fact that it would not be limited to Amazon. I wanted independent bookstores to have my books and not feel competition from an Amazon published book.

    Did you have to form your own publishing company to own the copyrights or deal with IngramSpark?

    I filed copyright. I immediately copyrighted it through the U.S. government.

    If you're an indie author, I highly recommend that you get an entertainment lawyer to help you with policies because we don't have big publishing companies behind us.

    We need legal help. We need contract help. That's what an entertainment lawyer is for. I secured one of those.

    He recommended that given the uniqueness of the name Questrison, that I trademark the Saga. I did that. That was extremely expensive, but I feel good about it.

    Because now I can put the circle R, it's a registered trademark. The Questrison Saga. You can't use it. It's my baby.

    Questrison Saga

    You've mentioned before that you've been working on these books for thirty years. Can you talk about why you decided to finish these books when you did?

    All through college, even though I was overwhelmed with schoolwork, the stories were always in the back of my head. I had also drawn a lot of the characters in them. I sometimes would still sketch those while I also learned how to do actual watercolor art from classes.

    After I had graduated college, it was a nightmare just entering the workforce. I ended up moving to the West Coast from Tennessee in 2000, and did work for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle for a number of years.

    Then after that, I briefly lived in San Francisco. That's when I thought "I have to get back to these stories." They're been in my head all this time.

    That's when I started working on what is now Ephemeris. I even made a brief little comic of it with my own sketches, outlining the story a little bit. That was the closest thing I've ever come to an outline, was this storyboard.

    After that, I had children. And I was very busy with them. laughs I worked as a science writer for four years. I felt that I was preoccupied by writing nonfiction.

    After the recession, I was laid off. I decided to apply to graduate school and I chose epidemiology, which is very topical at the moment.

    I came to San Diego to start a Master's Degree in epidemiology. I would have finished it, but I never saw my family and my younger child, who at the time was two, did not cope well. I chose to withdraw from the program. I have no regrets about doing that, because it was the right thing for the family.

    Then I meet another parent at my kid's school, who was an editor. He edited scientific papers, not fiction. I mentioned I had these stories, and I showed him the first few chapters of what become Heliopause.

    Not being a fiction editor, it wasn't really something he could work on, but he did encourage me to finish the story. I hadn't had that kind of encouragement. It was a kick in the pants. For that, I'll always be grateful to him.

    I call him the man that saved Heliopause.

    It's funny how encouragement or discouragement at just the right times can make a huge difference.

    Yes, and I definitely had been discouraged a few times.

    Some people would say, "Maybe it's time you just let that story go and work on something else."

    I hated hearing that. I thought, no, I want to finish the story. It's been in my head for most of my life.

    Positive encouragement is more powerful than discouragement. Because when somebody believes in you at the right time, and I hope that everyone has that person, it makes all the difference.

    Having worked on these for so long, how many drafts do you think you've been through for Ephemeris in particular?

    Well, it's funny because what is now Book Four was actually the first book.

    I started with what is Book Four now and then morphed it around, and what is now Ephemeris then came after that.

    Ephemeris is an interesting book because it takes place before, during, and after Heliopause. It's giving you a preview of things to come as well as things that happened in the past, and tying everything together later in the book with people from Heliopause.

    I've had so many drafts of these stories over the years. In my closet here in the office, there are binders full of handwritten drafts from over 30 years ago, including maps that I made, travel guides, glossaries, everything.

    My handwriting is just garbage, and that never got better.

    There were some typed versions too. I had a terrible typewriter, but a lot of it was handwritten.

    There's so many drafts. It's ridiculous. I kept a lot of them. I threw out a lot of them too. I don't even know how many there were to be honest with you.

    Basically, we have to talk in terms of the Questrison Saga instead of just one of the books, the whole saga. I knew the endgame from the beginning when I was a young teen. Just the journey to get there changed along with me as a writer in developing the craft as well as maturing as a person in experiencing life.

    When reading Ephemeris, it felt like I could point to certain locations and go, I think this is such and such a place that I know Dianne has lived. Like reading about Perpetua, is that Seattle?

    Heliopause, I've often said, is a love story to Oregon. Because Forster keeps remembering Oregon, and the time he was with Auna in Oregon.

    That's why when Aeriod presents him with the possibility of such a place as a planet [Perpetua], basically an untouched Oregon, he's delighted.

    Aeriod sets him up that way. He's thought it out. He knows what Forster cannot say "no" to. He's already thought through all the scenarios. "How can I get Forster to do what I need him to do? Let's throw out everything that he could just never say no to." And that's what he did.

    When I write about Galla on Perpetua, that's her first experience on a forested planet, near an ocean or anything like that. It's very instantly different than anything else she's experienced. That is similar to when I moved to Pacific Northwest in 2000.

    Not Seattle per se, which I don't have a lot of love for, but Oregon I absolutely adored.

    Are there other planets in the books that are also drawn from places that you've lived before?

    Well, I've driven a lot of roads.

    There's definitely some influence from my road trips because I have gone across the country several times in the past several years by car.

    Now there's a world in Book Four that is heavily influenced by my time in both Tennessee and San Francisco. Because I know that planet the longest, it feels very real. I feel like I'm there when I'm reading it.

    You'll see connections to a lot of the places I've lived in that book. It will seem very intimate. It will seem very real, I think.

    Books One and Two are already out. When is Book Three due?

    Early April for pre-order, with an intended release the end of May.

    → 8:00 AM, Mar 30
  • Keeping Score: March 20, 2020

    What a difference a week makes.

    Last Friday, I still felt okay going out to my local coffeeshop for coffee in the morning. I thought this week would be much like any other week, that we'd have to take extra care to make sure people that felt sick stayed home, and not congregate in large groups, but that's it.

    But then they closed the schools where my wife works.

    And people started posting pictures of empty grocery store shelves.

    Now everything is closing down: pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, the zoo, bookstores, publishers, everything is either shutting down or going remote-only.

    It's a frightening time, and I'd be lying if I didn't confess that it's made it hard for me to focus.

    So I'm not sure how many words I've written this week.

    I've worked on something, every day. I've gathered statistics that I'm going to use in a blog post for next week. I've been working through Gail Simone's ComicsSchool, which has been fantastic, and should result in my first complete comics script by the end.

    But I haven't come back to the short story I was editing. Or made any progress on the novel.

    I will do both, though, and soon. But for now, I've just...gotta work on something a little more low-key, to leave room in my head for processing everything that's happening.

    I hope you find the head space to keep working, whatever your project is, and that give yourself the time to feel the cocktail of emotions this thing is putting us all through.

    → 8:00 AM, Mar 20
  • Keeping Score: March 13, 2020

    Got 1,224 words written so far this week.

    Those are spread out over different projects. I added a little to the novel, started drafting several new essays, and decided to go back and edit a short story from last year.

    The story was easy for me to write, but it's been hard to edit. It's quite personal, pulling something from my childhood and turning it into a horror story. It's the first story I've written about where I grew up, and as such is hard for me to see any other way than how I've written it.

    So it's taken me counts on fingers about six months to digest some beta reader feedback I got on it, and figure out what the story needs.

    And I think I do, now. I can see a hole in the story, a gap in the POV character's motivations that I tried to paper over with his personal flaws.

    That might work for me, or for someone who also grew up in the kind of town I did, but it doesn't work for communicating that character's perspective to everyone else. That's a failure on my part, a failure of craft, and -- hopefully -- it's one I can fix.

    What about you? Have you ever had a story -- or a novel -- that you simply couldn't edit into shape until after a lot of time (and maybe some leveling up in your writing skills) had passed?

    → 8:00 AM, Mar 13
  • Keeping Score: March 6, 2020

    Got back to exercising this week. Back to holding to a schedule in the mornings. Back to allowing myself time to outline, when I wanted it. Time away from the novel.

    And it's working! I've written 1,540 words so far this week :)

    The new scenes in the book are coming together. I've finally got things mapped out in my head enough that I can sit and write them out again.

    Still might end up throwing them away, or heavily editing them. But at least I can get the raw material out now, to work with later.

    I'm even allowing myself to start thinking about revising some short stories that I've had sitting on a shelf since the move. Time to get back in the habit of submitting.

    So March is off to a good start. Here's hoping it continues.

    → 8:13 AM, Mar 6
  • Keeping Score: February 28, 2020

    Sometimes what feels like a really good week is followed by a bad one.

    For example, this week, in which I've only written 329 words.

    It's frustrating. Just when I felt like I was getting back in the groove of jogging, writing, and work, two things brought progress to a shuddering halt: I got injured, and I switched from editing back to writing new scenes.

    The injury was relatively minor. I had a planter's wart on the underside of my big toe that my dermatologist finally had enough of and burned off. Worth it, for sure, but that put a crimp in my jogging schedule.

    And the new scenes are...maybe a mistake. There's a sequence towards the end of the book where the POV character travels from one of the station to the other, witnessing the disaster that's just befallen it.

    She's mostly on her own, in the original sequence, which made it easier to write, but didn't feel as realistic to me. I mean, the chance she's going to go from one end to the other without seeing anyone are small.

    Plus, I think it drains the whole stretch of a bit of tension. If most of the danger has passed, including the danger of discovery, then what's going to pull the reader through the passage?

    So I'm trying out a version where she does get discovered, and has to talk (or trick) her way out of it.

    I think it'll be better, but it means I've got to invent three new characters, their personalities, and enough of their backstories to make them believable. Oh, and also make up what they were doing when they discovered the POV character, and how they go about it.

    Not to mention getting the POV character to tell me how she escapes from the mess she's now in.

    I'm telling myself that it'll all be worth it once I've got the new version done...But until then, it's slow progress each day, as I spend more time outlining now than setting words on the page.

    → 9:00 AM, Feb 28
  • Keeping Score: February 21, 2020

    976 words written so far this week.

    I'm slowly getting back into my old habits: Walking/jogging in the morning, writing during my lunch break, getting in a language lesson at the end of the day (I've decided to take up Swedish. Don't judge me).

    And it shows. It's getting easier to slip back into the novel every day, easier to make the edits I need.

    I'm still daydreaming about a couple of short stories I've got floating around in my head, but I'm trying to keep my actual write-and-edit focus on the novel. Because I'd like to be done, or at least done enough that I can send it out to beta readers.

    Which will need to include sensitivity readers, I'm realizing. Several of my POV characters are African-American, and I want to be sure I do their perspectives justice.

    Depending on their feedback, that could mean I end up doing a lot more rewrites. Or having to scrap the book altogether, if doing right by those characters turns out to be beyond my reach. I hope not, but...I'm not exactly in the best place to judge that.

    So I'm going to ask for help. And listen, when that help is given.

    Till then, all I can do is write the book as best I can, and hope.

    → 9:00 AM, Feb 21
  • Keeping Score: February 7, 2020

    So the move was...rougher than I expected.

    As you can see above, I sliced my head open while unloading stuff into our new garage. It's better now, but at the time we thought I'd need stitches, because it just wouldn't stop bleeding.

    (And yes, I went to Urgent Care, but they couldn't see me, because -- and I'm not making this up -- they were overwhelmed with patients coming in prior to the Super Bowl).

    We had help moving, but even so it took us all weekend, plus Monday and Tuesday evening, to get everything out of the old place and into the new one. I swear I had no idea how much stuff was crammed into that townhouse.

    And now we're unpacking. Or, as I've come to think of it, the "Where the hell are my socks?" phase. Every day is a new hunt for things I used to be able to pinpoint without thinking about.

    Oh, and I didn't take any time off after the move. Which in hindsight was maybe a mistake? Given how much we've had to do every night, after work.

    As a result of all that, I'm tired, I'm frazzled, and I only got 250 words written this week.

    But there's a weekend coming up, and while it'll be full-on unpacking and organizing, all day each day, it'll bring some sense of order to this place. Reduce my cognitive load enough to where I can get back to (writing) work.

    I hope.

    → 9:00 AM, Feb 7
  • Keeping Score: January 31, 2020

    As I'd hoped, I was able to write some more over the weekend last week, and boost my total word count to 1,724.

    So the fact that I've only got 1,121 words written so far this week is ok.

    Especially now that I'm at the point where I'm mostly editing chapters again, instead of drafting new ones to fill in gaps. Easier to comb through a chapter for continuity errors than write the first draft containing said errors.

    So I'm 13 chapters from being done! And 10 of those are already first drafts, so they just need editing passes to bring them in line with the rest of the book: a continuity pass, a blocking pass (to check that the setting, and the characters' movements within it, is consistent), and a dialog pass (to make sure each character speaks like themselves).

    Let's say I'm able to finish 3 chapters a week. That might be ambitious given my schedule, but it means I could be basically done by March.

    Done. As in, "let's send this out to beta readers" done. As in, "you can work on something else now," done.

    That would feel...fantastic. I hope I can pull it off.

    What about you? How far along are you in your current work? Can you see the light at the end, or are you still in the long dark of the tunnel? And how do you persuade yourself to keep going, when in that dark?

    → 9:00 AM, Jan 31
  • Keeping Score: January 24, 2020

    Only 947 words written so far this week.

    I'm not worried though; first because I've got the weekend coming, and I should be able to crank out another 600 words, either tonight or tomorrow.

    But also because I've been working every day, even if that hasn't produced any words. I've been outlining, and drawing up maps, and planning out blocking for scenes that need it.

    So I've been making progress every day, at least. Keeping the story fresh in my mind, so when it is time to spin out the words, it's not so intimidating.

    What about you? Do you give yourself credit for all the work that happens around the writing, and if so, how?

    → 9:00 AM, Jan 24
  • Keeping Score, January 17, 2020

    Only 500 words written this week.

    The impending move (and sale + purchase) has absorbed most of my available head space. Every day there's been more paperwork to fill out, more historical information I need to sift through, more obstacles to clear.

    I've been able to work on a new short story, outlining and sketching out dialog, but that's all. No progress on the novel, no revisions to other short stories...Nothing.

    But today I should, finally, knock out the last few forms until closing day. And for closing, all I have to do is show up :)

    So I'm hoping to do some catch-up writing this weekend, and have a head clear enough to get back on my regular schedule next week.

    What about you? How do you manage to keep your writing going in the middle of a stressful event like a move?

    → 9:00 AM, Jan 17
  • Keeping Score: January 10, 2020

    1,774 words written this week. Managed to hit my writing goal most days, and surpass it once or twice.

    I'm trying out a new schedule, where I sit down to write for 30 minutes each day, between walking the pups and doing my morning jog. It's earlier than before, and pre-shower (thinking in the shower being my traditional way of resolving tricky plot problems).

    But somehow, doing it before anything else is helping me. Like I can go on my jog and let my mind wander again, instead of trying to force it to think about the novel.

    The words come a bit easier too, because I know I'm going to sit for a given block of time, and there's not going to be any interruptions.

    Granted, I'm still using tricks to get things done, like focusing on just one tiny part of the story at a time, or doing scenes piecemeal (first dialog, then blocking and description, then thoughts/reactions). But it seems to be working, for now, at least.

    What about you? Have you tried changing when you set aside time to write, to see if different times of the day (or night) make it easier to put words to page?

    → 9:00 AM, Jan 10
  • Keeping Score: January 3, 2020

    Happy New Year! I hope you achieved your writing goals in 2019, and work your way to new heights of craft in 2020.

    For myself, I feel like there were several highs: getting my first short story accepted for publication, attending my first writers conference, and discovering the score-keeping method I've been using to push my writing forward.

    But also several lows. In fact, 2019 ended on a low for me, with me dreading each writing session, and my 300-word daily goal frequently out of reach. Writing has felt more like drawing blood, recently, than making art or even normal work. I've not been blocked, so much as completely demotivated.

    I'm trying to push through, though. Forcing myself to write the 300 words, each day. Even when they feel pointless, when it seems I'll never finish this novel. I fear I'll still be working on it next year, grinding away at something that I might not be able to sell, in the end.

    Not a heartening way to start the year, maybe. But I wrote 2,148 words this week, step by step. I'm using Anne Lamott's one-inch-frame technique, to narrow my focus down to the point where I can write something. It's working, so far. I am, slowly, making progress.

    What about you? What are your writing goals for 2020? And when your inspiration is running low, what do you do to fill it back up?

    → 9:00 AM, Jan 3
  • Keeping Score: December 6, 2019

    Only a measly 300 words written this week.

    I can blame the time change (from East Coast back to West Coast hours). I can blame the stress of getting back into the day job after a week off.

    But really, it's just been hard pushing the words out this week.

    Hard even to carve out time in the day to do it. I know, I know, that's a perennial excuse, but it's true: some days, it's damn hard to find even thirty minutes where my brain isn't mush and I'm not rushing off to do something else.

    So I'm hoping to find some time today, and each day this weekend, so I can at least finish out the week with 1,500 words done.

    I feel like I'm going to have to reconsider my schedule soon, though, and drop something from it to make room for writing. Only, I don't what I could possibly let go of.

    How about you? What do you do, when you feel your writing time slipping away? How do you claw it back?

    → 9:09 AM, Dec 6
  • Keeping Score: November 29, 2019

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    We're on the East Coast this year, doing what's become a bit of a tradition for us: Crashing someone else's Thanksgiving :)

    We stay with friends of ours in Maryland that we've known for the better part of two decades, and spend the week hanging out with them. I usually make a detour up to Boston to see some other good friends of mine, but I make sure I'm back time for turkey.

    Thankfully, travel this time doesn't mean a loss of writing time. Though I've fallen off the wagon a bit these past few weeks, this week, at least, I've managed to keep up. So: 2,112 words written towards the new novel.

    ...which is a little less than I'd like, given how much time I've spent on trains these past few days, with nothing else to do but type. But I'm finding this last third of the book tricky to navigate. I'm having to pause more and think things through, making notes on different possibilities before picking one and writing it out.

    It's not a bad thing, per se, but it does mean progress feels slow. I'm telling myself that I'll make up for it later, when I'm able to drop in whole chapters from the first draft, instead of rewriting them from scratch.

    If you did NaNoWriMo this month, I hope you're close to the finish line. If you didn't, I hope your current work-in-progress is going well.

    For everyone, I hope you're going into the final month of 2019 doing the one thing that is necessary for progress in this craft: writing!

    → 7:19 AM, Nov 29
  • Keeping Score: November 1, 2019

    3,026 words written this week.

    Most of those are on the novel, but about a third are edits on the short story I wrote back at the SoCal Writers Conference in September.

    Reading the story now, I think I like it more than I did before. Not necessarily the language the story's told in; I can see plot holes and awkward phrasing. But the story itself: The characters and the setting, how the protagonist's heart gets broken, and how she pieces herself back together. That's what I'm in love with.

    A good sign, maybe? Certainly it motivates me to finish, to edit and polish the story until it's the best version I can produce.

    But it also means I might miss flaws in the telling. I have to beware of liking my own voice too much, instead of the voices of the characters.

    How do you balance being critical of the work versus liking it enough to keep going? Do you tend to err on the side of hatred, or do you fall too much in love with your work?

    → 8:34 AM, Nov 1
  • Keeping Score: October 25, 2019

    I think I've written myself into a corner this week.

    I'm working on a scene where I want to have one character drop a particularly important piece of information. It's something that changes the dynamic of the scene -- from fight to negotiation -- and sets the stage for a partnership that runs through the rest of the novel.

    The trouble is, I've gone out of my way earlier in the book to insist she doesn't remember anything related to this dramatic, juicy, bit of info.

    So I'm in a bit of a bind. Do I try to find some awkward way to shoehorn in why she might remember this bit but not anything else?

    Or should I go back and rewrite the parts where she doesn't remember, and change it so that she does? And deal with the ripple effects that'll cause?

    I'm hoping my subconscious is working on the problem, and will present me with a solution soon. I really don't want to have to rewrite those other scenes, here when I'm so close to finishing this draft.

    What do you do, when you realize the needs of the story -- the drama, or the tension -- are pushing you to change parts of the plot?

    → 8:48 AM, Oct 25
  • Keeping Score: October 18, 2019

    2,477 words written this week.

    I'm going full-steam-ahead on the novel, closing in on the last dozen scenes or so I need to write to finish it out.

    Each new scene, I still think to myself "I don't know if I can do this." But if I just sit there long enough, staring at the screen, and refuse to budge, or to look away, the words will come.

    They may not be the right words, or good ones. But they're progress, the raw material I can use later to shape the story.

    Pushing ahead on the novel means I'm not going back and revising the short stories I wrote over the Writers Conference weekend. That bothers me, but I'm honestly not sure how to do both. Perhaps once I finish this novel draft, I can pause and revise the short stories before plunging back into the book for another editing pass?

    What about you? How do you balance multiple projects? Or, like me, do you find it hard to switch between different works?

    → 8:33 AM, Oct 18
  • Keeping Score: October 4, 2019

    I’d heard that the bubble of elation you feel when you first have something accepted for publication doesn’t last long.

    I only half-believed it, of course. Surely I would be different, my expectations set better, my heart both more and less trusting.

    Because if one acceptance happened, couldn’t another? And another? And even if rejection came, wouldn’t that one acceptance be enough to keep me going?

    Turns out the answer is no, no, and nope.

    I’d had a story out to one magazine for a good while – close to three months – and as the time stretched out without getting a rejection notice, I began to hope. The acceptance of another story just made that hope bigger, and my dreams with it: What if all the stories I had out currently got accepted? What if I was able to join SFWA this year, all in a rush, with three stories that I’ve spent years working on all getting accepted in a short window of time?

    But the rejection came yesterday, and my little bubble of hope popped with it.

    Now I feel like half a success, half a failure. It doesn’t help that I’ve heard nothing from the magazine that’s accepted a story since that acceptance; no signed contract, no payment, nothing. So even that success feels ghostly, as if one strong wind could blow it away, and I’d be back where I started. Unpublished. Always-rejected.

    I’m telling myself to be patient. That the only thing I can control is the writing, so I’d better damn well do that part.

    And it does comfort me, a little, that I wrote 2,223 words this week. I’m back to making good progress on the novel, and I’ve got two stories to edit into shape before sending them out into the world.

    Chances are they’ll probably be rejected, too. But I can’t control that. What I can do is write another story, then another, and keep writing. Keep improving. And keep submitting.

    One story got through. I can keep writing until another one does, too.

    → 8:50 AM, Oct 4
  • Keeping Score: September 27, 2019

    Wrote 2,559 words this week!

    I’m trying to get back in the habit of writing daily, or nearly-daily, and it’s paying off. Even though I only wrote 1,400 words at the Tuesday write-in, I put in some time after work Monday and Thursday to push over the 2,500 mark.

    Most of that work’s been on the short story I started last Friday, at the Writers Conference. It was supposed to be a flash piece, in and out quick, but it’s turned into a full 3,000-word story.

    And it might get longer. I compressed a lot of time towards the end, fitting years of change into a few paragraphs. Those might have to be uncompressed in order to feel like a more natural ending. So it might grow another one- to two-thousand words.

    But that’s a problem for later, after I’ve let the story sit for a week or two. Then I can be a bit more objective.

    For now, it’s back to the novel. I’m in the middle third of the book, when characters start colliding against each other on their way to the blowout before the third act.

    And I’m still getting ideas for things that might need to change. Not minor things, like how a character speaks. Major things, like entire plot points and character motivations.

    I’m unsure whether they’re good ideas, though, so I’m just taking notes on them for now. Once this draft is done, I’ll have another look at them and pick and choose which changes to make.

    Until then, it’s forward. Ever forward.

    → 8:11 AM, Sep 27
  • Keeping Score: September 20, 2019

    Only 750 words written this week.

    But they’re good words, because I got ‘em rewriting the scene from last week.

    The first draft of that scene turned out to be closer to what I needed than I thought. I was worried I’d have to throw the whole thing away and start over, but just changing the timing of some of the events, and adding in a hazard here and there, was enough to up the tension.

    Now instead of being a step-by-step account of someone looking around in the aftermath of a disaster, it’s a POV character dodging debris as they try to figure out just what kind of disaster they find themselves a part of.

    Have you ever had an editing task turn out to be easier than you thought? Where a small change to a scene makes a huge difference in how it reads?

    → 9:51 AM, Sep 20
  • Keeping Score: September 13, 2019

    Have you ever written a scene, and almost as soon as it’s done, you realize you have to rewrite it?

    That happened to me this week, while getting my 1,133 words in.

    The scene I plotted out last week started well, but about a third of the way through I started hitting writer’s block. Like I was bored with the scene already, and wanted to move on.

    I pushed myself to finish the draft out, just to have the scene done. So I could say I accomplished something that night.

    But as soon as I woke up the next morning, I knew I needed to start over from scratch.

    If writing the scene was boring for me, it’s going to be boring to read, too. And I could see exactly where I went wrong: I had the scene start after most of the danger was over, and the scene was the character piecing together what had happened after the fact.

    Better to start with the character in danger, and worried for their safety. So they have to scramble to keep themselves alive, and figure out what’s going on.

    It’ll have higher tension, be easier to write, and be a lot more fun to read.

    I don’t want to rewrite the scene. But I’ll need to, if I’m going to keep some narrative momentum going.

    What about you? Do problems with your scenes ever manifest as writer’s block?

    → 8:48 AM, Sep 13
  • Keeping Score: September 6, 2019

    Only 156 words written this week.

    I skipped out on the weekly Write In, and it shows. While I did get a few extra scenes plotted out, and connected some dangling plot threads while I was at it, I only started one scene.

    I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. The pups have been sick, the heat wave means that even with the a/c going I still feel lethargic in the afternoon, and there’s been some ripples in our finances.

    But I can’t help but think I should have gone to the Write In anyway, and that if I did, I’d have made more progress this week.

    So I’m definitely going next week. And maybe I need to start writing more on a daily basis, even if it’s just a hundred words, rather than cramming everything into one night?

    → 8:21 AM, Sep 6
  • Keeping Score: June 21, 2019

    785 words written this week (so far). I’ve got some catch-up work to do over the weekend.

    I’m still bouncing around between scenes. If my word count’s lighter than last week, it’s because I’ve been writing more new scenes, and doing less editing of existing ones.

    I still feel non-linear is working for me, though. I finally broke through the blockage on the original scene that made me go non-linear, this week, and knocked out a basic version of it. I’m going back now and adding texture, additional insights into the character’s thoughts and motivations.

    I had a slight mini-blockage toward the end of the scene when I couldn’t decide how to properly weave in a bunch of backstory and explanation, so the character’s actions would make sense. In re-reading the scene, to get my bearings, I realized a good chunk of that explanation actually belonged earlier in the scene. And in moving it up there, I freed up the narrative load of the scene’s end, so I can say what I need to say without bringing things to a screeching halt.

    I also started thinking about changing the gender of one of the antagonists…But I’m holding off an acting on that, just yet. One set of edits at a time.

    How are your projects going? Steady progress, or stuck in a plot swamp?

    → 8:37 AM, Jun 21
  • Keeping Score: June 14, 2019

    1,285 words written this week.

    The new “just get something done every day” rules are really helping me. I’ve actually spent more time outlining and plotting this week than anything else. That’s allowed me to see the shape of the remaining story better, and that has let me take pieces of my previous draft and slot them in, then edit them into shape, letting me make good progress.

    I’ve also been able to see which scenes were missing from my previous outline, and start keeping notes on those.

    Which means I’ve also abandoned linearity this week. Instead of working through each scene in order, I’m jumping around, adding a few words here, then editing a chapter from a previous draft to fit the new storyline, then jotting down some notes on a post-climax scene.

    I didn’t think I could work this way, but the proof is in the word count: I can. It’s gotten me out of the slump I felt I was falling into, staring at the same scene every day, unable to make progress.

    There’s a part of me that’s starting to whisper “you could finish by the end of June after all,” but I’m shushing that part as much as possible. I need to make progress, and I’ll not go pell-mell just to hit a self-imposed deadline (and likely make myself sick again in the process).

    What about you? When editing, do you find it easier to go scene-by-scene through the book, or do you hop around?

    → 8:20 AM, Jun 14
  • Keeping Score: June 7, 2019

    980 words written so far this week. If I can steal an extra hour or so for writing this weekend, I’m on track to hit 1,500 words, which I’ve decided to keep as my weekly goal, for the novel at least.

    Why? Two things: First, I’ve been sick for…it feels like a month now. And I’m still not well. Without going into details, I’ve developed this wonderful case of burning, stinging pain everytime I move my head. But I’ve got to keep making progress on this book, or I’ll never finish it. Sick or not.

    Second, this piece by Chuck Wendig made me re-think my approach to my writing goal. I recommend reading the whole thing, but for me it boiled down to this passage:

    It is a kindness to yourself. Don’t expect to run a mile out of the gate. Don’t demand you write the next bestseller. See the increments. Break it up. Find safe, sane, kind limits for yourself — and then you will find it increasingly easy to exceed them. To embrace a little and relish the success instead of always trying to conquer the whole damn lot — and falling short every damn time.
    In other words, it's ok to set your goal at the bare minimum. When you meet it, you feel good because you made progress. When you exceed it, you feel great.

    Given everything else that’s going on, I definitely don’t want to make my writing into a chore. I don’t want to set my word count goal so high that I’m going to feel like a failure every day.

    But I do want to make progress. So here’s the deal I’m making with myself: 300 words of progress on the novel, every week-day, adding up to 1,500 words a week total. If I go past that, great! But if I just hit it, that’s ok too.

    And once I’ve hit my goal for the day, or the week, I’m free to work on other things: outline a new novel, edit a short story, etc. My thinking is this will make me feel less trapped in the current book, like I can’t work on anything else until it’s done.

    We’ll see if that turns out to be the case. Wish me luck.

    → 8:14 AM, Jun 7
  • Keeping Score: May 31, 2019

    This week has been a total bust, writing-wise.

    I started getting sick Sunday evening. By Monday, I had a fever and chills, coupled with an incredible rate of snot generation. That’s morphed into a lovely cough with a bonus sinus headache.

    So instead of using Memorial Day to sprint through my word count for the week, I spent it trying not to move from underneath the covers. And every day since, I’ve spent what little energy I have at the day job, leaving me nothing for the novel.

    And I’m still not well. Dammit.

    I’m angry and I’m frustrated. I feel like a week of work has been stolen from me.

    But I’m trying not to be angry at myself. I tell myself that illness is going to happen. And I can either rail at myself for taking it easy, or accept that there are times when I’m not going to be able to do everything.

    It feels like an excuse, to be honest. But I also know that after a day of coughing and sneezing and headaches and working to keep the roof over my head, my brain is mush.

    So I have to give it time. For now.

    → 8:25 AM, May 31
  • Keeping Score: May 24, 2019

    So I messed up.

    I’ve been hitting my 1,500 word goal each week, like clockwork. But it’s not enough.

    Based on where I am now, I’d need to write (or edit) something like 8,000 words a week in order to hit my self-imposed deadline of the end of June.

    That kind of pace is…unlikely, to say the least. Possible, sure, but unlikely, given my schedule.

    Earlier this week, I thought about going for it. Staying up later, getting up earlier, pushing to finish on time.

    But the more I thought about it, the more stressed I became. It was harder to get started writing in the morning, because I knew I’d need to write four times my usual word count just to keep up.

    I actually thought about quitting the novel altogether. Just dropping it and going back to working on some short story ideas. I’ve got plenty of them; I could keep busy with shorter fiction for the rest of the year.

    Instead, I’ve decided to get rid of the source of my stress and doubts: I’m scrapping the deadline.

    I’m definitely going to up my weekly word count, though, starting next week. 1,500 words is just not cutting it, in terms of finishing in a timely fashion. I don’t want to be still working on this draft next year. And I do have short stories I want to work on, stories that will take time to get right. Time I’ll have to earn by finishing this novel draft.

    Wish me luck.

    → 8:00 AM, May 24
  • Keeping Score: May 3, 2019

    Only 1,147 words so far this week.

    I seem to be perpetually hovering around 1/3 of the final word count of the novel, between 15,000 and 18,000 words. My total word count will start to climb, as I add new scenes, but then plunge when I delete old ones that no longer fit.

    And I’ve still got that deadline of the end of June to hit.

    I shouldn’t be worried, I suppose. If I finish another third this month, and then the final third in June, I’ll hit my target.

    But what if I’m only halfway through by the end of May? What am I going to give up in order to get back on track?

    Because I need to hit my June deadline. I’m already looking at writing conferences in the fall, ones where you can get pitch sessions with agents and editors. Spending all that money to go will be a waste if I don’t have a finished book to pitch.

    So I need to finish this editing pass by the end of June, so I can send it off to beta readers for feedback, and have time to do some polishing passes before October.

    October. Damn, I don’t want to still be working on this book by then.

    I’d better get back to writing.

    → 8:00 AM, May 3
  • Keeping Score: April 26, 2019

    1,594 words written this week.

    Those words have been pulled out of me, letter by letter. I have to open Scrivener and start reading the previous days' work as soon as I sit down to breakfast. If I wait till after I’ve finished, and let myself sink into Twitter or reading blog posts or magazines, I never get started.

    Even once I’ve started, I keep checking my word count. “Am I done yet? No? How about now? Now? This time?”

    I both can’t wait to be done with this rewrite, so I can move onto to the next project, and I don’t want to do the work necessary to finish it. It’s grinding, boring work, and – because I know even this draft is going to be imperfect – terrifying at the same time.

    Why am I doing this, again?

    Oh, yeah: because this story can’t be told without me. If I don’t write it, no one will know about Marcus, or Julia, or Franklin. No one will feel their pain, their fear, as I have. No one will rejoice at their triumphs.

    I owe it to them to finish. So that’s what I’ll do.

    → 8:16 AM, Apr 26
  • Keeping Score: April 19, 2019

    1,086 words this week, all for the novel edit, this time.

    Though I suppose calling what I’m doing a second draft would be more accurate. I’m not just reading through chapters, tweaking phrases and dialog. I’m rewriting some chapters wholesale, others I’m stitching together from bits and pieces of the previous draft like a linguistic version of Frankenstein’s monster.

    It’s hard to ignore that previous draft, sometimes, even when I know it’s wrong. Not just bad – though the writing certainly deserves the name vomit draft – but wrong. Wrong for the story, wrong for the characters, wrong for the book. And yet, the fact that its words are done, written there on the page, makes it tempting to use them. Even when I know I shouldn’t.

    So it’s easier to delete them, get them out of the way. Of course, then I’m staring at a blank page, that intimidating spotless thing. Who am I to rubbish it up, especially when I know this won’t be the last draft? These revisions will need revisions, and those will need tweaks, and those will need a polish.

    I resort to tricks, at that point. Lie to myself. “Just 50 words,” I’ll say, “and then you can go back to Twitter.” Or: “Just describe what this character feels right now. You’ll cut it later, but get it done now, just in case some of it’s good.”

    And once I’m going, it’s hard to stop. Even when the clock reminds me that it’s time to close up shop and head to the day job, to earn the money I use to keep my hobby – my art – going.

    Every day a new trick. A new lie. But every day the word count grows. The work takes shape. The story comes alive.

    → 8:19 AM, Apr 19
  • Keeping Score: March 29, 2019

    Something V. E. Schwab tweeted earlier this week really struck me:

    It's often hard to start, but wow, I always forget how much BETTER I feel after writing/editing/working. It's like a pressure valve. My chest feels looser. My head feels quiet.
    Could not agree more. Particularly this week, when I put off working on the novel for...well...most of the week, only to finally sit down on Thursday and bang out most of my word count.

    And it was like a spring uncoiled inside me. My shoulders relaxed. I realized I hadn’t listened to music all week, either, but after writing I finally felt like listening again. I felt like singing.

    I hope I don’t forget that feeling, today, tomorrow, or next week.

    Particularly today, when I’ve only got 1,034 words in towards my 1,500-word goal. The number’s a bit of a jumbled mess; I’ve hit the point where I’m leaving most scenes intact, but still need to rewrite whole sections to make it work. So I’m taking the total word count for each scene, dividing it by two, and moving on.

    That means I need to go through 1,000 words this weekend in order to hit my goal. Note to self: remember how good it feels to be done writing? Hold onto that.

    What about you? Do you find you’re more relaxed after writing? Or is it like taking a bite of your favorite pie, and once you get going you never want to stop?

    → 8:24 AM, Mar 29
  • Keeping Score: March 22, 2019

    Only 751 words written so far this week. Seems I’ll be playing catch-up again this weekend.

    I’ve had some trouble writing the new scenes, particularly dialog. I want to be sure to capture each character’s unique way of speaking, along with their thoughts and feelings in the moment, all the while maintaining the right intensity level for the scene.

    It leads to doubt, which leads to feeling blocked. Which means no words.

    To unblock me, I’m trying something new: let them swing for the fences. As in, instead of internalizing something like:

    I wanted to tell him to go to hell. But I knew I shouldn't, because that might set him off again. Get me in trouble with the Warden.
    I go ahead and let the characters say what they want to say:
    "Go to hell," I blurted. "You've wanted my job for years, and you're just looking for an excuse to take it. But I'll be damned if you'll get it without a fight."
    ...and then, sure, they get in trouble. But it's more interesting to write, it's easier to write, actually, and hopefully it's more interesting to read.

    What about you? How do you get over the fear and doubt that come from staring at a blank page?

    → 8:00 AM, Mar 22
  • Keeping Score: March 15, 2019

    Wrote 971 words this week towards the second draft.

    That’s short of the 1,500 words I’d like to produce by the end of the week, so I’ll have to do some catch-up work this weekend.

    I’m not too worried though. Even though I’m terrified of sucking every time I sit down to write, once I get over my fears and actually do it, everything flows. It’s like I know who these characters are, I know where and when everything is taking place. I finally have a solid grasp of what their story is and where it’s going.

    I’m hoping this won’t turn into a complete rewrite. Not that I can’t do it – I feel like I actually could, no question – but I don’t know that I could do it in time to meet my self-imposed June deadline.

    I don’t think that’ll have to happen, though. I’m writing new scenes now, but later on I should be able to take scenes I’ve got and just tweak them a bit to make them match the new story beats.

    How do you choose which parts to keep and which parts to re-work completely when editing something? Do you lean more towards keeping what’s there, or are you more inclined to tear it up and start over?

    → 8:03 AM, Mar 15
  • Keeping Score: March 8, 2019

    Finally getting back to the good part: the writing.

    Or rather, the re-writing.

    Finished off the sequential outline earlier this week, after going back through the workbook outline and my manuscript to slot in missing scenes.

    Then I took all the scenes from the first draft and shoved them into a single folder, marked “Original.” That way I can keep them around for reference, and pull what I need from them, without them being in the way of the scenes I need to completely rewrite.

    Starting with the opening sequence.

    Early feedback on those scenes said they lacked tension, and they were right. Thankfully, after going through the workbook, I’ve got much better ideas for them. I’m going to introduce some antagonists earlier than before, and tie the bigger conflict arc to their early conflicts with the protagonist.

    I will, most likely, eff up these scene drafts, too. But they’ll be better than before. And hopefully, if I get the story beats at least down correctly, I can work more on language and dialog later.

    → 9:03 AM, Mar 8
  • Keeping Score: March 1, 2019

    Finished the workbook’s version of the outline. Finally.

    Now I’ve just got to take that outline, plus my other notes from the workbook, plus the existing novel, and hash it all together into a regular, scene-by-scene, linear outline.

    Easy, right?

    Maybe it would be, if I didn’t feel so demotivated all of a sudden. Every time I reach for the outline to work on it, I can feel my shoulders sag. I feel like reading, or doing laundry, or scrolling through Twitter, or even working on one of the short stories I’ve got waiting in the queue. Anything but keep working on that outline.

    I’m tempted to skip it, and just dive back into writing. No notes, no plan, just go.

    But that’ll end up with me making another messy draft, won’t it? I’ll just have to go back through it and do the same exercises, all over again.

    So I plod on. Maybe I’ll give myself some time off next week, reduce my writing days to 2 or 3 instead of 5. Allow myself to work on something else, try to recharge the batteries.

    Wish me luck.

    → 9:00 AM, Mar 1
  • Keeping Score: February 22, 2019

    I’m two-thirds of the way through the workbook’s version of the outline.

    I say workbook’s version, because it’s not linear. It doesn’t go scene by scene by scene. Instead, it groups scenes by their impact on the story: the five most important beats on the way to the resolution of the protagonists' main problem, etc.

    So even once I’m done with it, I’ll need to draw up a second outline, one with everything in order, so I know where and when to drop each of the elements from the workbook’s outline.

    This is becoming more work than I thought.

    I’m starting to worry if it’s all necessary. If I’m hiding behind the outline, instead of diving in to get the edits done. Certainly outlining feels like work, like good work, brainstorming different ways scenes could go. But it’s not writing the actual book, it’s just prep.

    And I must confess I have some trepidation about writing the new scenes. They’re all going to be first drafts, which means they’ll be bad, and need revision later. But those revisions will mean changes to other areas, probably, which’ll mean more edits for the altered scenes.

    I worry that I’m looking at a chain of revisions, extending through the rest of the year and beyond.

    In some ways, it might be nice to have a deadline, and someone to send it to. Then I could see an end to the chain of editing, or at least a point where I’m forced to hang up my keyboard and say “no more.”

    Perhaps I should choose one, then. According to my notes, I started working on the ideas and characters for this book in June of 2017. Two years isn’t too bad a time to spend working on a novel.

    So I’ll target being done with these revisions by June 30, and thus having the book ready to go out to beta readers at the very least, if not agents.

    There. Now I have to get past the outline stage and get cracking on writing new scenes. I’ve got a deadline to meet.

    → 9:03 AM, Feb 22
  • Keeping Score: February 15, 2019

    The novel keeps changing.

    I’m trying to pull all the threads from the workbook together, so I know what edits I need to make. I’ve been using the outline template from the workbook, which has been surprisingly helpful.

    But as I do so, I keep having more ideas, better ideas, that ripple out and change the book. One of my characters has gone from being a Senator, to a corporate auditor, to a DOJ Investigator. The key scene between my protagonist and one of the secondary characters that makes him switch sides, which was weakly motivated before, now has the solid footing of a quid pro quo exchange (tied to one of the protagonists' plot layers).

    Once again, I’m glad I’m taking the time to do this work. I was skeptical of the workbook’s outline at first, but in going through the process, I’m learning a lot about my story and my characters. Some of its seeing how much I really do know about the world, and some of its seeing those connections that I didn’t before.

    So it looks like I’ll be lucky to finish the outline by the end of this month. But it’ll be a damn good outline, once it’s done.

    → 9:00 AM, Feb 15
  • Keeping Score: February 8, 2019

    I’ve finished the workbook!

    Well, finished as much of it as I can. There’s a few exercises that I’ll need to come back to.

    One says to take every scene in the book and choose one detail to heighten, which is something I’ll want to do after I’ve written the new scenes and re-arranged the ones I have.

    Another had me write a pitch, and then follow-up by coming back to the pitch in a week and winnowing it down some more. That’ll obviously have to wait.

    But I’m done with the bulk of the exercises. Now all I have to do is put them into practice.

    So next week I’ll be combing through the workbook, pulling notes and scene ideas out and combining them with the notes I have from own first read-through.

    There’s going to be a lot of changes, so I’ll need some way to keep track of them all. I think I’ll start by writing out a new outline, sketching out the scenes (new, changed, and existing) in order. That’ll give me something to compare to the novel as it exists now, a guide to what needs to change.

    I might also work up a timeline, just to be sure everything’s in place, and maybe even a map of the setting, to fix everything in my mind.

    Hopefully I can get all that done in a week, and then start on the edits the following week.

    I have no idea how long those’ll take. This is my first time doing this – editing a novel top-to-bottom using more than just my own gut instincts – and I want to do it well, or at least as well as I’m capable of doing it.

    If it takes me all year, that’s fine. So long as keep at it, and finish it.

    → 9:15 AM, Feb 8
  • Keeping Score: February 1, 2019

    I’m almost done with the Breakout Novel Workbook. Only seven exercises left to go, which I might be able to knock out by the end of next week, assuming I double-up some days.

    Even as I enter the last part of the book, the novel keeps changing. One of the last exercises was on marking changes in how the characters see each other, which pushed me to ask why Character X comes to see Character Y favorably, which led me to alter a scene so those two characters were in it (instead of the original two), which opened up new connections I hadn’t seen before between events very early in the book and the arrival of Character X, which led to…a whole cascade of changes.

    All good changes, I think. The workbook emphasizes connections – between characters, between actions, between subplots – and each change is making the parts of the book more connected. With each change, it’s almost like I can feel the various plot threads pulling together, tightening up.

    And I need that tautness, that tension. I want this story to be so tight it hums.

    I’m even starting to see where the lessons of the workbook can be applied to the short stories I’ve been shopping around. Ways to make their stories more personal, more powerful. Once I finish the workbook, I might practice some of those techniques on the short stories before tackling the novel. None of the stories have sold, so it can’t hurt, right?

    → 9:00 AM, Feb 1
  • Keeping Score: January 25, 2019

    I’m almost two-thirds of the way through the Breakout Novel workbook, now.

    The exercises seem to be getting easier. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m resisting them less, or because I’m just getting used to the idea of needing to punch up the book. Definitely not because they’re any less work; most of the exercises end with a variation of “all that work you did? great. now repeat it ten times, for other parts of your novel.”

    Things are starting to fall together, though. Changes inspired by one exercise are rippling through the others, presenting new opportunities for making the book better.

    For example, one exercise had me work through the story from the perspective of my antagonists. Thinking about what would make their lives harder pushed me to change the occupation of one of my protagonists, and that opened up new ways to make her story intersect with the other characters in interesting ways.

    I know that each change I contemplate is creating more work for myself down the line, when I start to actually implement these changes in the novel. But I’m excited about the work, actually, not intimidated. I feel these changes really will make my novel better.

    I might not succeed in pulling them off, true. But if I don’t push myself, if I don’t try to make them, I’ll never get any better at this. And that would be worse than failing.

    → 9:02 AM, Jan 25
  • Keeping Score: January 18, 2019

    Ever had a week where you feel like a failure? When even the things that go right don’t go right enough to balance out the things that go wrong?

    That’s what this week was for me.

    Not on the writing front, thank goodness. But in my day job, in the work that keeps me fed and clothed and housed. This week it felt like nothing I did there was good enough, for anyone, and it’s had me looking forward to the weekend like nothing else.

    Thank goodness for my writing. Even as I work through the Breakout Novel Workbook, finding flaws in my novel, I don’t feel defeated. I feel energized, like I finally have full control over something. There’s no committee going to tell me to leave a scene as-is to meet an arbitrary deadline. No coworker to stomp on my dialog choices because they think things should be phrased differently.

    No, this novel is mine, like nothing else is. I can do what I want with it, fix it the way I want to fix it, polish it until it gleams.

    It’s a powerful feeling, and a solace during such a hard week. Editing this novel is going to be a lot of work, but it’s work no one can stop me from doing.

    → 8:53 AM, Jan 18
  • Keeping Score: November 12, 2018

    Another week down: 2,295 words written!

    Not all of those were for the novel, though. I’ve decided I want to try my hand at posting more here: more essays, more organized notes, etc. I know I won’t do it if it means taking time away from hitting my word count goals, so I’m making a change to the way I keep score: from now on, I’m counting words written for a blog essay as half.

    So, for example, writing up a 900-word essay would count 450 words towards my weekly goal.

    At the same time, I’m raising my weekly word count goal, to 2,500 words. I’ve been hitting the 2,250-word goal for eight weeks now. It’s time to stretch a bit further, and adding in essays to the word count should make 2,500 achievable. And even if I don’t write any essays in a week, it’s only 50 words extra per day.

    Wish me luck!

    → 9:00 AM, Nov 12
  • Keeping Score: November 5, 2018

    Still on target, if just barely: 2,256 words written last week.

    I’ve reached the “ye gods, when will it be over” stage of writing this book. I know I’m close to the end, and I know basically where I’m going, but it feels like a slog to get there. Doesn’t help that I changed how to get to the ending a while back, adding another 10-20,000 words to the story.

    Thanks, past me.

    So I’m blowing things up. Shoving obstacles in front of my characters left and right. Tweaking personalities of minor characters to make them more interesting (with notes to go back and make them consistent later). In general, just merrily running a drill through the story until I get to the ending.

    Who knows? Maybe all these changes will end up being cut. Or maybe I’ll end up twisting the rest of the story so they fit.

    I’ll only know once it’s done.

    → 9:00 AM, Nov 5
  • Keeping Score: September 17, 2018

    2,306 words written this week!

    I’m trying to let go a little more this week. As in, stop worrying so much about what would be realistic and worry more about what’d be interesting. To approach the new scenes and descriptions thinking “what would be cool?” rather than “what would be expected?”

    Again, I don’t know if this approach will make the book any better. No way to tell until it’s done. But it is making it both more challenging (I have to think things through a bit more) and more fun (anything goes! so long as I can describe whatever it is).

    I’m heading into the final stretch of the novel, so I’m giving myself more liberty to experiment. Since I know where I’m going now, and who’s taking me there, I guess I feel more free to play around.

    I’ll probably just end up making more problems for myself down the line, but for now, I’m just enjoying flexing my wings a little bit.

    → 8:09 AM, Sep 17
  • Keeping Score: September 10, 2018

    I did it! Hit the new word count goal: 2,285 words written last week!

    Again, I wrote most of them on the weekend. Mornings last week were consumed with vacation planning, as the trip we’re taking to Ireland in October is coming up fast. Had to get everything booked before it sells out, so that took priority over my writing during the week.

    But I still got it done!

    Pushing closer to the climax. Even this close to being done, though, I’m still finding things that I wrote earlier that I’ll need to change.

    For example, while writing one scene, I realized the character I’d planned to have in it to do a certain thing couldn’t be there, because he wouldn’t do that thing; it just wouldn’t make sense for his character. So I had to change the scene mid-stream, as it were, and finish it out with a different character in mind (and even a different action, so the plot’s changing, too).

    I suppose I should expect this by now, though. The book isn’t going to be right the first time, and I’m going to have to go back over it multiple times until it is right. I suppose I should be grateful I’m able to see any mistakes now, instead of having to wait for them to be pointed out to me by beta readers later (though I’m sure they’ll find more when they go through it).

    So I’m keeping the higher weekly word count for now. Not sure what I’ll do when it comes time for the Ireland trip. Either take some time off, or maybe, just maybe, I’ll be done before then?

    → 7:51 AM, Sep 10
  • Keeping Score: August 20, 2018

    Blew past the word count goal this week: 2,133 words written!

    I realized yesterday that I’m almost at 40,000 words. Since I expect this novel to be brief (about 50K or so), at my current pace I’ll be done in about five weeks.

    Five weeks!

    Who knows if I’ll actually be finished at 50K, but it’s exciting to think about putting this first draft to rest. Feels like I’ve been working on this novel forever. It’s only been nine months, though, and it’ll be close to a year before I’m done.

    Ok, not done exactly, but at least done with the first draft of it.

    I’d like to get into a pace where I can finish (as in, draft, revise, stick a fork in it, ship it finished) a novel a year. I’m not quite there yet; if I finish this one by October, I’d only have a month to do all the edits it needs, which likely won’t be enough time.

    It’d be better if I could revise one book while writing another. I haven’t been able to master that trick yet; the one book takes up so much head space for me that it’s all I can do to occasionally spit out a short story or two while I’m in the middle of the draft.

    Maybe I could find a way to edit on weekends, and work on the new draft during the week? Or vice-versa?

    Not sure what’s best. I just know once this draft is done I’ll have four novels that are finished drafts, but not finished pieces. And that’s starting to bug me. I need to be sending these out, trying to land an agent. But that’s hard to do when they’re not in any shape I want a professional to see them in.

    Do you revise one book while writing another? How do you do it?

    → 7:50 AM, Aug 20
  • Alive by Scott Sigler

    Intense.

    The prose is stripped clean of excess, going down so smooth it injects the story right into your bloodstream. And hot damn, it’s a good one.

    I haven’t read a lot of YA, but this is the first one I enjoyed, start to finish.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • First-person, step-by-step, can be brutal: by sitting right inside the character’s head, it’s easy to get sucked in, and then when the shit goes down, you feel every victory and defeat like they’re happening to you.
    • Every group has a jerk. Every group in fiction needs a jerk.
    • One way to handle writing a large group, where each person needs their own personality, is to write scenes in which the group rotates through different configurations. The numbers stay manageable, but the composition of the group in the scene changes, giving each member a chance to shine.
    → 8:30 AM, Jul 9
  • Crooked by Austin Grossman

    Another strong portrayal of a villain from Grossman.

    Avoids the trap of completely rehabilitating Nixon. He’s sympathetic without being likable, and interesting to follow without the reader always cheering them on.

    Loses steam in the second half. There’s plot lines that go nowhere, scenes that could have been cut without changing anything, and the climax happens completely off-screen, with no buildup or release of tension.

    Still, I learned a few things about writing:

    • Delivering most of your plot via dialog -- so long as you're not data dumping -- can be a great way to keep the story moving.
    • The best villains think they're the hero.
    • Restricting your book to one POV can be too confining. Multiple POV can let you explore other aspects of your world, which you might need if your story takes place somewhere very different.
    → 6:00 AM, Jun 26
  • Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan

    A 1990s trenchcoats-and-mirrorshades action film published in the 21st century with 1950s gender roles. An odd, frustrating, throwback of a book.

    Three things it taught me about writing:

    • Be careful when porting an old genre to a new skin. Bringing along the social mores along with the other elements will make your book feel dated from the start.
    • Taking an otherwise-competent character and pushing them out of their element is a great way to both explore a new world and make it challenging for them.
    • In sci-fi, it's not enough that the names of things -- computers, cars, etc -- change. Our relationship with them needs to change, too, or it's just window dressing.
    → 6:00 AM, Jun 19
  • The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

    Basically perfect. It’s low-key, character-driven sci-fi, stuffed with cool ideas and diverse cultures. Completely scratched my Firefly itch, in a good way :)

    Three things it taught me about writing:

    • Can think of chapters as episodes of a TV series, with cuts between multiple points of view, similar beats, and cliffhanger endings.
    • Having the Shit Go Down at the end of the book rather than the beginning gives the reader time to know and care for the characters, making it more tense.
    • You can get away with an infinite amount of info-dumping if it's a knowledgeable character explaining things to a clueless character.
    → 6:00 AM, May 29
  • Persona by Genevieve Valentine

    Disappointing.

    Starts out well, action pumping and character backstories fleshed out just enough to make you care, but not enough to stop the flow of the story.

    But the world around them never congeals for me, and the atmosphere of threat and double-cross the story needs can’t happen without it.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • Switching perspective characters early on is a great opportunity to give more context to what's happening, since it's another angle on the world
    • In a modern setting, you really can cut descriptions down to the bone, to put the focus on dialog and action
    • Can do character backstory in a single chapter, covering years of someone's life, with breaks in-between
    → 6:00 AM, May 15
  • I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas

    Disturbing. Most of the characters are completely unlikable, especially the men: the worst are outright misogynists and racists, even the best act like superior assholes to everyone else.

    Mamatas doesn’t pull any punches in exposing the sexism and harassment that happens at fan conventions. It makes for tough reading, both because the female protagonist is constantly experiencing it and because the male narrator, whose death she’s investigating, is one of the superior assholes it’s hard to sympathize with.

    Worth reading, though, if nothing else than as a “Do I act like this?” check.

    Three things it taught me about writing:

    • - Can get away with very skimpy descriptions -- or none at all -- if you choose the proper perspective to tell the story from (in this case, a corpse's).
    • Protagonist's motivation for pursuing the mystery can be thin, if the reader's interest is piqued enough for them to want to see it solved
    • Characters will always rationalize their behavior. Even when dead.
    → 6:00 AM, Apr 3
  • White Horse by Alex Adams

    Frustrating and disappointing. Adams' writing is stuffed with metaphors, giving everything a dreamy quality that makes it hard to take anything seriously.

    Didn’t help that I just came off reading Octavia Butler’s Earthseed books, which do a much better job of narrating a woman’s journey through a post-apocalyptic world.

    Three things it taught me about writing:

    • If readers already know the narrator survives a scene in a flashback, don't try to wring tension out of their survival.
    • Readers need to know not only what your characters are doing, but why, if they're going to care.
    • When writing a character from a different country, do several editing passes to be certain their dialog, analogies, and expressions all match where they're supposed to be from.
    → 6:00 AM, Mar 13
  • Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

    Prescient, gripping, and intimidatingly good. Definitely going to read more of Butler’s books.

    I’m rather sad that she wasn’t able to complete a new Earthseed series, like she planned, before her death.

    Three more things she taught me about writing:

    • Perfectly acceptable to have the sequel start out as more "and then this happened".
    • First act turn is a great place to upend what the characters have built previously, have the outside world come in with the force of a storm.
    • Editors and compilers of biographies can have agendas just like other characters, and become more interesting when they reveal them
    → 7:00 AM, Mar 6
  • Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

    Oddly compelling. Told any other way, it’d be just one more story about giant robots and the people piloting them. But by telling it through interviews, to make it feel like you’re reading a classified dossier, makes it feel fresh and compelling.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • Even old ideas can feel new again when told in a different way.
    • Interviews can let you do first-person narration without having to actually narrate. No need for detailed descriptions, etc. Can take a lot of shortcuts and still feel real.
    • Don't forget the interviewer! They have their own agenda, and that should come through in their questions and reactions.
    → 7:00 AM, Feb 22
  • The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

    Eerily prescient. Takes place in a California where water is scarce, most government has been privatized, and the President uses racial politics to push through reforms that weaken protections for workers and the poor.

    Felt all too familiar. And she predicted all this over twenty years ago.

    I usually don’t like post-apocalyptic books, especially ones that go in for the “slow apocalypse” where everything just collapses over time as people stop taking care of the things that keep civilization going. It’s depressing reading, but Butler’s writing is so compelling, I had to see it through.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • Scarcities in society will be reflected in the social order. If food is scarce, being fat is a sign of wealth. If water is scarce, being clean (taking baths) will be seen luxurious. In both cases, being poor and engaging in "rich" behavior will be seen as uppity.
    • There's life in the hero's journey yet, if explored from different angles. Here the young protagonist grows up in a small town, yet feels called to greatness, then compelled to become a leader when driven out of their home.
    • Adopting a diary structure can let you skip past boring parts of the story will zooming in on the important ones. A well-written diary will do that, and still give you a chance to convey the rhythms of life, since it's the story the person is telling themselves, as they live it.
    → 7:00 AM, Feb 15
  • The Just City by Jo Walton

    Inspiring. I could not imagine daring to try to write dialog for Greek gods and long-dead philosophers, but she did, and does it brilliantly.

    Made me miss my days as a philosophy major, and that’s a good thing.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • Long explanations of things are ok, but only after the reader has come to know the characters, and care about them.
    • Switching first-person narrators is fine, so long as you keep the number of them down and clearly label each chapter so we know which character is speaking.
    • Sense of place can come through not just by food and clothing, but architecture and leisure activities as well.
    → 7:00 AM, Jan 25
  • Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

    Moving. Robinson conveys both the triumphs and the horrors of interstellar colonization, covering hundreds of years in a single book. Almost cried at the end of the penultimate chapter.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • The experience of agoraphobia (possibly all phobias) is something the written word is much more suited to portray than film, allowing us to think what the sufferer thinks, feel what they feel, better than other media.
    • In a longer work, you can structure chapters as stories of their own, with a cold open, development, slow crisis, resolution, and a reveal
    • When narrating long periods of time, zoom out to establish rhythms or patterns, zoom in on unusual or unique happenings (or things that have an impact on the larger patterns)
    → 6:00 AM, Jul 6
  • The Martian by Andy Weir

    Fantastic. It’s Robinson Crusoe in space, executed so well that what should have been boring and cliche is instead full of tension and humor. I sped through this book, consuming the whole thing in two days.

    Looking forward to watching the movie. Oddly enough, since I know Matt Damon plays the title role, I heard his voice for all of Mark’s journal entries. Felt like a good fit.

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • You can mix regular narrative with journal entries, but it's best to introduce it gradually, and only once the main storytelling mode has been established.
    • Relative dates will do just fine. Most of the time, they don't really matter.
    • Humor (in the characters or the narration) makes a bleak or depressing situation much more palatable.
    → 6:00 AM, Jun 20
  • Looking Back

    I’ve been thinking about how I wrote this last novel, and what I might need to change about my writing process.

    It felt a lot harder to write this one than the last one, and took longer, too. Maybe there are sone things I need to beware of, danger signs I should watch out for, when starting my third?

    I think my first mistake was not writing a short story set in the world of the novel. I did this – accidentally – for my first book. Didn’t know it was an actual technique until I saw an interview with N K Jemisin (an amazing writer whose most recent book is up for a Hugo!)  where she mentioned that she always – deliberately – writes a short story in a new world before starting a novel set there. Her reasons lined up exactly with my experience: writing the story gave her a sense of the world and the kinds of characters and conflicts that might happen there. Even if she doesn’t use the characters from the short story in the novel, all the world-building she’s done helps.

    My second problem was trying my hand at science fiction. My degree is in physics, so my Inner Editor gets all fired up when I’m writing something set in “the real world,” rejecting ideas left and right because “it doesn’t work that way.” It’s something I’m working on, because it blocks my writing flow, constricting my choices and making me doubt that I can write anything that maintains consistency.

    Third mistake: writing through trauma. I mentioned this at the time, but trying to write through the events of the latter half of last year was almost impossible. I was distracted, I was angry and frustrated and scared, I was in no way ready to push through a novel like this. I’m glad I did, in the end, but without my wife and my friends to lean on, I don’t think I would have.

    So, lessons learned:

    • Write a short story version first.
    • Don't worry about matching current scientific understanding in the first draft. Save consistency for the edits.
    • Don't force myself to write through a traumatic event. No extra pressure needed.
    → 6:38 AM, Jun 17
  • Finally

    New novel’s done!

    Topped out at 111,733 words yesterday morning.

    I feel proud, relieved, and confused all at the same time. Proud for getting it done, relieved that I can move on to the next project, confused that I might actually be done with the first draft. There’s a part of my brain that’s circling the last few chapters, going “are you sure we’re finished?”

    But I am, thank goodness.

    Next it’ll be on to editing the draft of my previous novel, whipping that into a shape I can send out to agents.

    But that’s later. For now, the order of the day (of the week?) is to relax, recharge, and regroup.

    → 6:00 AM, Jun 8
  • Nope

    Novel’s at 103,532 words…and it’s still not finished.

    Wrote about 10,000 words in the last five days, pushing to uncover the ending. But there’s more story left to tell than I thought. Blew right past 90,000 words, then 100,000, and it’s not done.

    My revised outline – yes, I’m still revising it, thank you – points to five more chapters, and then I’ll be finished. That means somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 words to go.

    So I’m pushing my deadline to July 1st, and setting a target of 1,000 words per day until it’s done.

    One way or another, I will finish this draft.

    → 6:00 AM, Jun 3
  • Can't Talk Now, Writing!

    No real blog post today (or likely on Friday or Monday), as I’m focused on wrapping up the novel before June 1st.

    Wish me luck!

    → 6:01 AM, May 25
  • No Time Off

    Novel’s at 88,796 words.

    I’m pushing myself to write at least 400 words a day, stretching to 500, instead of my usual 250. I’m writing every day now, instead of taking weekends off. I’ve even shifted my work schedule – heck, shifted the dog’s feed schedule – so I can put in more writing time in the morning.

    All so I can hit my deadline.

    Don’t know if I’ll hit it. It’s looking like the book will blow past the 90K word target I’d set for myself, back in the heady days when I thought 50,000 words was more than halfway through.

    But how far past 90,000 words? 2,000? 5,000? 20,000? No idea. (Note to self: please try to get it done before 120,000 words).

    So: 12 days left. All I can do is keep pushing, and see where it ends up.

    → 5:59 AM, May 20
  • Closing In

    Managed to quiet my inner editor long enough to push the novel to 86,126 words this week.

    The puzzle pieces are starting to come together for my protagonist, which is making things a little easier. Each part of the solution they come across leads them on to additional questions, which reveals more of the solution.

    All I have to do – I tell myself – is write down what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, and let the events I set in motion earlier play out.

    It’s not that easy – it’s never that easy – but the lie helps, somehow.

    I also keep reminding myself that: a) if it turns out that what I’m writing is crap, I can fix it in the next draft, and b) the only way to get better for the next novel is to finish this one.

    → 6:00 AM, May 13
  • Not Blocked, Afraid

    Novel’s at 83,370 words.

    So I turned out to be wrong about sustaining the faster pace. Only managed 700 words this week.

    I could say it’s because I’m doing more planning and outlining, and less writing. I could say it’s because I’ve started jogging in the mornings again, so I have less time to write.

    But in truth I’m distracted, conflicted, and afraid.

    I’m afraid I won’t have the book done by the end of the month. I’m afraid I won’t be able to edit it into something worth reading later this year. I’m afraid I’m wasting my time, that I should be spending more of what free time I have working on side programming projects, investing in my skills there instead of here.

    In short, I’m afraid I’m making a mistake.

    And of course, the lack of writing progress only makes the fear worse. It’s evidence, you see, that I’m not up to snuff, that I need to just move on to something that will pay more, something that’s more in line with my day job, anything other than this.

    Right now, I’m just hoping the fear will pass. Till then, all I can do is force myself to sit down, stare at the screen, and push the words out. Even if they’re terrible.

    We’ll see who quits first.

    → 6:00 AM, May 6
  • Speeding Up

    Novel’s at 82,649 words.

    Deadline seems to be working. I’ve been writing about 400 words a day since setting it, pushing myself to write more than just my 250-word minimum so I can hit the goal.

    It also helps that I seem to have turned a corner in the narrative. My protagonist has gotten past the major stumbling block in her path, and is starting down the trail of the villain.

    The book itself is picking up pace as she goes, heading toward the climax, and my writing is as well.

    Let’s hope I can sustain it through the month.

    → 6:00 AM, Apr 29
  • Footsteps in the Sky by Greg Keyes

    Fantastic.

    Keyes juggles plot threads involving first contact, corporate espionage, traditionalists versus progressive technologists, power struggles, abusive families and grieving for recently-passed relatives, all without dropping a single one. Grounds everything, even the novel’s villains, in sympathetic characters that you may not agree with, but still don’t want to see harmed.

    It’s an incredible feat. I’m awestruck by it, and more than a little jealous.

    Three things it taught me about writing:

    • Sometimes just listening to a character's thoughts as they worry about their present and plan for their future is enough to tell us what we need to know about the world the story's taking place in.
    • Spending time with villains, and sympathizing with them, raises the stakes of the climax for everyone.
    • Always handy to have a newcomer to the world as an audience surrogate. As they learn and explore the world, so does the reader, without any info-dumping being necessary.
    → 6:00 AM, Apr 25
  • On a Deadline

    Novel’s at 80,577 words.

    I’m closing in on my original 90,000 word target. I have a feeling the final draft will end up longer than that, possibly close to 100,000 words, given the ground I have left to cover.

    I’ve set a deadline for myself, though. I want to have this draft done by June 1st.

    It’s just a little over a month away, but I think I can make it. Partially because I’m in the final scenes of the book, and partially because I want to. I started the book last July, so wrapping up the draft in June would mean I’ve spent just shy of a year writing it.

    I think having a target to hit will push me to write more each day, and finish it out. With this draft done in June, I can take some time off before diving into the editing of my first novel. And I want to get that done before the year is out so I can start submitting it to agents.

    → 6:00 AM, Apr 22
  • There's a Theme?

    Novel’s at 78,941 words. Which is an odd time to have finally figured out its theme.

    Or rather, one of its themes. You’d think I’d have known this going in, the kind of weighty things I would be trying to deal with in the story.

    Nope. I had a hook, a starting scene, and an idea of how I wanted to portray the characters. That was it.

    Actually stumbled across the theme this week, while reading a different book. Something in what the author was talking about meshed with the upcoming events of the story my subconscious was chewing on, and that was it: I knew my theme.

    It’s a little late to alter the draft much to accommodate it, but I’ll be writing the last third with the theme in mind. It’ll really come into play when I go back through for the second draft, and start making edits to bring it out more or eliminate passages that conflict with it.

    → 6:00 AM, Apr 15
  • Steady as Ink Flows

    Novel’s at 77,376 words.

    Writing’s been chugging along this week. My last major decision – read: stop and outline – point was a few weeks back, so I’ve been mostly writing out the consequences of that.

    There’s another I-have-no-idea-what-happens-next point coming up, where the other shoe is finally going to drop, and right on top of my main character’s head. Not quite sure how they’ll react.

    I don’t think I’ll reach it till next week, though.

    Hopefully I’ll have it figured out by then?

    (Probably not)

    → 6:00 AM, Apr 8
  • No Sick Days

    Came back from Boston with a lovely head cold that made me want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

    I didn’t though, thank goodness. Instead I pushed myself to hit my word count every day this week, bringing the novel to 75,638 words.

    And counting. I still feel like I’m on the tail end of the book, but I have no idea how close to the end I am. I could be another 30,000 words away, I could write through next week and suddenly discover I’m only 10K from the finish.

    There’s only one way to know. So, if you’ll excuse me, sets hard hat on head picks up shovel it’s back to the word mines for me.

    → 6:00 AM, Apr 1
  • Too Much Information

    Novel’s at 73,653 words.

    Still pushing forward, thought the last few scenes have been hard for me to write. Usually that’s because I don’t know enough about something in the scene – how a bail hearing would be conducted, or the cooking techniques of feudal Japan – to feel comfortable writing it. This time, it’s because I know too much about what’s happening in the scene.

    Specifically, I know things that, if my characters knew them, would make accomplishing their goals much easier. But they don’t work in the field, like I do, and so their knowledge is limited.

    But how limited? How much should they know, and how much are they ignorant of? How much would just be common sense?

    And even for the things they do know, or that they stumble on that work, how much detail should I go into as to what’s happening? How much info do I dare dump on the poor reader?

    It’s striking that balance – between showing too much detail and not enough, between thinking the characters know more than they should versus not giving them enough credit – that’s been difficult for me.

    → 6:06 AM, Mar 18
  • Forward, Ho!

    Novel’s at 72,337 words.

    I’ve managed to fix last week’s mistake, and gotten back to making forward progress through the novel. There’s some small dangly bits of plot that are poking out around my patch, but I’ve decided to note them for now, so I can come back to fix them in the second draft.

    Instead, I’m plowing forward.

    → 7:00 AM, Mar 11
  • Oops

    Novel’s at 70,855 words.

    Didn’t do any writing over the week of the cruise. With no internet, and no laptop, I decided to take the week off. I feel like I’m on the final third of the book, and I hoped taking a break would give me the energy for that final push.

    Returned to writing yesterday, and I’m glad I stepped away from the book for a bit. Re-reading the scene I was in the middle of revealed a glaring hole in its logic.

    I found a fix, but it means shifting the course of things going back a few chapters. So these past few days have been ones of revision, of snipping out the parts that don’t make sense and replacing them with explanations that do.

    I’m hoping by next week I’ll be back to making forward progress. But for now, it’s patch, patch, patch, till the plot holds water again.

    → 7:02 AM, Mar 4
  • The End is Visible

    Novel’s at 70,684 words.

    Final third of the novel is starting to take shape.

    The plot’s taken two sharp left turns in as many weeks, but it’s ended up on a path where I can actually see where things are going now, and how they’ll wrap up.

    It’s an odd feeling. Here I was trudging along with no end in sight, just a vague idea of how I wanted things to turn out. The plot – and my original outline – suffer two sharp shocks, and now I know where I’m going.

    Let’s hope it lasts for the next 20,000 words.

    → 7:00 AM, Feb 19
  • Slapped in the Face with the Answer

    Novel’s at 68,869 words.

    My characters are smarter than me.

    Throughout writing this book, there’s been a couple of weak links in the chain of my original outline. Places where various plot threads didn’t quite meet up. I’ve been debating – and discarding – different ways to resolve them, but never quite hit on the right way.

    That is, until not one, but two of my characters told me the solution.

    One of them did it quite early on, but I dismissed it as too easy a way out.

    But this week, another character told me the same thing. This time, I listened.

    It creeped me out a little, because they handed me both the solution and the justification for it. It ties all the plot threads together, makes sense of the entire chain of events, and deepens the conflict at the same time.

    It’s beautiful, but even though it came from one of my characters, it doesn’t feel like my idea.

    I’m using it anyway, though.

    → 7:00 AM, Feb 12
  • Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig

    Fantastic. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve been a Chuck Wendig fan ever since Blackbirds (you have read Blackbirds, haven’t you?). Nor am I saying that because his blog is a fountain of NSFW writing inspiration (though it is).

    I’m saying that because it’s a Star Wars book that tells a great story, fills in some of the time between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, and manages to feel like a Star Wars movie in novel form. That’s a tough balancing act, and kudos to Wendig for pulling it off.

    Here’s what I learned about writing from it:

    • Don't be afraid to be opinionated in giving description. It can help keep things brief while still being vivid.
    • Part of what makes a hero feel scrappy is not things going right, but things going wrong, all the time. Little blunders and bad luck that they just manage to survive make them feel more real and keep the reader rooting for them.
    • You can frame the start of scenes just like framing a shot in a movie. Think of a character's head popping through a hatch, or opening on a lightsaber glowing in the darkness. Can be a visual hook into the rest of the chapter.
    → 7:00 AM, Feb 10
  • Emerging from the Shadows

    Novel’s at 66,694 words.

    This week’s events have thrown more light onto the villain of the novel: what he wants, how far he’s willing to go to get it, and just how long he’s been planning to take it.

    One of my protagonists is gone. The other has to carry on mostly alone now, and I don’t know if she can survive. She’s out of her depth, and she’ll need all the allies she can find – or cajole – to win this one.

    Here’s hoping.

    → 7:00 AM, Feb 5
  • Running Off the Rails Holding Scissors

    Novel’s at 64,623 words.

    My entire plot’s taken a huge left turn.

    I’ve been off outline for a while, but not in a scary way. Most of what’s happening has followed on from what’s happened before, a nice logical progression of “this has happened, so the character would do that” kind of writing.

    It let me forget that this novel has a villain. And they’re not sitting idle.

    On Wednesday morning, they insisted on doing something so terrible, it’s thrown all my plans out the door. One of the characters might be dead. Another might be about to turn criminal.

    And the villain? Well, they’ve taken a huge leap forward towards winning.

    There’s no telling where the story’s going. It’s terrifying, but thrilling as well. I have to write it, now, if only to find out what happens next.

    → 10:00 AM, Jan 29
  • Steady On

    Pushed the novel to 62,769 words this week.

    I’m trying to worry less and less about picking the right words, about using the right sentences to get my meaning across. As I drift further from my original outline, I’m trying to focus on discovering what happens next, on keeping things consistent, rather than the particular phrasing I’m using.

    That’s rough for me, since I’ve always been careful about the words I use when talking or writing, always worried about saying the wrong thing, about failing.

    But in this case, failure means not speaking, not writing. So long as I can get something down, I can move forward, and discover more of the book. I try to remind myself of that, and to remember that only once the book is done can I go back and make it right.

    → 10:00 AM, Jan 22
  • Grinding Ahead

    Novel’s reached 61,085 words.

    New routine is still working. I’ve managed to hit or exceed my word count goal each day, by writing for thirty minutes each day, first thing in the morning.

    Such a small thing, a small amount of time, and yet it’s made a big difference. I’m starting to see progress again on the book, scenes wrapping up and new ones getting started, new plot lines opening up ahead of me.

    I’ve even allowed myself to take the weekends off from writing, so I can work on other projects. I think of it as both a reward and an incentive: reward for getting the writing done during the week, incentive to hit my word goal each day for the next one.

    We’ll see how long it holds, especially as I head into the uncharted (unoutlined) territory ahead of me. But for now, it feels good to be making steady, if slow, progress.

    → 10:00 AM, Jan 15
  • New Year, New Start

    Novel’s at 59,195 words.

    Didn’t get much writing done over Christmas break at all. Had all these great plans for cranking out mounds of text while I was off work, plans that got thrown out when my wife and I both came back from seeing my family in Texas with the flu.

    Oddly enough, it seems the break was good for me. I’ve been getting up an hour earlier since the start of the new year, taking time to both exercise (nothing makes me worry about my physical fitness more than when my body breaks down on me) and write.

    So far it’s working. I’m still sick, and now sore to boot, but I’ve hit my word goal every day this week. I feel like I’ve discovered an extra hour that was hiding from me.

    I’ll also admit a small part of me likes writing despite my lingering cough, as if each word is me spitting in the eye of disease.

    So here’s to the New Year. May we all use it to write more, to write better, to write, write, write.

    → 10:00 AM, Jan 8
  • Writing in Batches

    Novel’s at 56,441 words.

    Got most of my writing for the week done on Sunday, in one go.

    I’m glad I did. Between the new dog, a root canal retreat, and pushing to get everything done at work before the holiday break, it’s been harder to slip into writing mode during the small breaks I have to get some done.

    Hopefully I’ll be able to carve out some more time this weekend to write another chunk of the book, and once the holidays hit, make a concerted push to write more every day.

    → 10:00 AM, Dec 11
  • Shifting the Outline

    Novel’s at 55,647 words.

    I’ve been able to hit my 250 word goal most days, thank goodness.

    Not every day; I’ll confess that when the brand-new tub started leaking again and one of the house’s walls started wobbling and my wife and I stayed up half the night talking about giving up and moving out, my brain was too distracted to do much writing.

    But we’re pushing through that, and I’m continuing to push through the book.

    I’ve had to shift to doing more outlining, though. I’m about halfway in, and I’ve introduced enough new characters and plot threads that I needed to spend some time adjusting my plan for the latter half of the book.

    Granted, that’s time I’m not putting words on the page, but it’s helped me feel more focused when I do start writing again. By taking a step back, I get a better sense of what things are worth keeping going forward, and which characters need a little more fleshing out if they’re going to stay. I can also see what threads I’ve been dropping, and plan a way to bring them back in before it’s too late.

    → 10:00 AM, Dec 4
  • Reverse Pomodoro

    Still no working bathroom, no walls on the house, no ceiling in one room, and no fix for my failed root canal.

    But I’ve managed to get the novel to 53,225 words.

    I’ve hit my word count every day this week, by writing in the cracks: while my wife is getting ready in the morning before work, on my lunch break, while I’m waiting to be picked up after work. It’s only 5, 10 minutes at a time, sometimes less, but it’s somehow enough.

    I’m pushing myself to write, even on my phone, even if I don’t remember the exact line I left off on in the book. It’s forcing me to keep more of the story in my head, sure, but it’s allowing me to move forward despite not having a solid block of time to work in.

    I keep telling myself that the only way to fail here is to quit. So I’m not going to quit, even if it takes me another six months to get to the end of the novel. I’m going to finish it.

    → 10:00 AM, Nov 20
  • No Time to Wait on a Sinking Ship

    I’ve had to compromise on my daily word count multiple times. First I slipped from 500 words a day to 500 words per weekday, taking weekends off. Then it was 500 words three days a week. Then 250 words.

    Now if I get any words down at all during a day, I have to pat myself on the back.

    Somehow I’ve managed to push the novel to 50,898 words.

    Meanwhile, the house we bought is being completely rewired, most of the walls have had to come down and be replaced, the living room’s missing a ceiling, and I haven’t had a fully functioning bathroom for five days (we discovered a leak in the walls of the shower that meant we had to replace the whole thing: tub, surround and all).

    Oh, and one of my root canals decided to fail after humming along quietly for ten years.

    I’ve tried to tell myself that this’ll all pass soon, and I can tread water until things get back to normal.

    But what if they don’t? What if this cascading series of crises is the normal? What if it lasts 3 months? 6? A year? Am I going to wait to finish till then? Am I going to hold back and make do when I don’t know what will happen next?

    I don’t want to tread water. I want to take what I’m going through and pour it into the book, to turn these failures into something successful.

    I don’t have any control of what part of the house – or me – falls apart next. I can’t even control my schedule enough to have a regular writing time anymore. But I can push myself to write every chance I get, to use marlapaige’s suggestion and write on my phone, write in my notebook, write anywhere and everywhere. I can finish what I’ve started, and I don’t have to wait.

    → 10:00 AM, Nov 13
  • Is This Progress?

    Novel’s at 49,793 words.

    I’m having to steal writing time from other things. Not set aside time, but literally steal, like jotting down a few dozen words while waiting for my wife to pick me up from work, or hovering outside the bedroom/office in the morning with my laptop so I don’t wake her.

    It’s frustrating. I feel like I’m not making any progress, that I can’t build up any momentum. It helps that I’m trying to pants things a little more – easier to snatch time from other things for writing that way – but it also hurts, since without a larger plan of where I’m going I don’t have a way to track how far I’ve come.

    I’m trying to be patient, to eek out what words I can until the house is in better shape. But we keep coming across problems in the house that need to be fixed – like the bathtub leak we found two days ago – that keep sucking up all my time.

    I’m afraid; afraid that if I don’t get some sort of rhythm going again that I won’t finish the book. And I don’t want that kind of failure hanging around my neck.

    → 10:00 AM, Nov 6
  • Anathem by Neal Stephenson

    Came out of this one with mixed feelings. Really enjoyed the first third or so of the book, but it turned into a slog about halfway through, when the focus shifted away from the monasteries. Almost broke off reading a couple times after that.

    I did learn a few things about writing, though:

    • In a work this long, with this many locations, maps become critical. I got lost in the monastery, I got lost during the overland journey, I got lost in every location despite -- or because of? -- the descriptions. Even a rudimentary map would have helped anchor me in the world.
    • When introducing a new vocabulary, you need to be doubly-sure the reader understands those terms before they become critical to the plot. There was an entire section (the first voco incident) that had no emotional impact for me because I didn't know what voco was.
    • Showing a different side of a cliché plot can be enough to make it interesting again. In the regular telling of this story, the avout would be on the sidelines, popping up only when things needed explaining to the other characters. But here they're the focus, so we see the entire incident from their point of view, making an old plot feel fresh.
    → 10:00 AM, Nov 2
  • Writing on the Run

    Greetings from Arkansas!

    No writing post last week, because on Thursday I finished packing up the house, got on a plane, and flew into Fort Smith.

    Got a lot of work done on the flight, but since then writing time has been hard to come by. The house we bought turns out to have bad wiring, bad plumbing, mice, and walls so shot through with mold we’re having to strip them down to the studs.

    Oh, and our stuff hasn’t arrived, so I’m still living out of a suitcase.

    Thankfully there’s a coffee shop nearby (ok, it’s ten minutes away by car, which is really damn close by Arkansas standards) with comfy chairs and semi-reliable wifi. It’s been my office all week, for both the day job and the writing job.

    I’ve managed to push the novel’s word count to 46,417 words, though it feels like I’m writing while on some sort of weird business trip. One where I don’t go anywhere, but I also don’t know where anything is or have any space to call my own.

    Thank goodness the same techniques that work on planes have been working here: put the headphones on, re-read the last day’s work, and write what comes next.

    → 9:00 AM, Oct 9
  • Dropping Threads

    Novel’s made it to 43,593 words.

    Starting to worry that pantsing it means I’m dropping plot threads. I’ve already noticed a major one that just completely fell of my radar, and two more that are smaller but also haven’t been addressed in a while.

    Not sure if I should slow down and try to fill them in, work the missing threads back into the book, or keep moving forward, and worry about fixing it later.

    This might even be a good thing, a sign that these plot elements don’t belong, and should be cut, not reinforced.

    It’s hard to tell which is right. I think it’s too late for the major plot point, that’ll have to wait for the second draft. The minor ones, though, I think I can fill in as I go, and take care not to leave them behind. I guess if I get stuck somewhere further in to the book, and it’s because of these missing threads, I’ll know to be more careful in the future.

    → 9:00 AM, Sep 25
  • Writing Through It

    Novel’s grown to 41,169 words.

    This week’s writing has been done not in spite of stress, or without it, but because of it.

    A lot of things I thought were settled suddenly popped back up again: my mother-in-law has been in and out of the hospital, the buyers for our house seem to be having second thoughts, and my day job turned into slamming my head into a brick wall over and over again, for eight hours.

    On top of that, the time for me to pack up the house and move is getting closer, so I’ve got that prep to deal with: going through years of accumulated memories in an empty house and sorting through which ones get to come with us and which ones get left behind.

    I thought it would prove too much, and that I’d have to stop writing again. I did take off an extra day this week, spent it watching movies instead of working on the book.

    But the next day I got back into it, and was surprised to find that writing the novel – at this point, at least – is the easiest way to take my mind off of all the stress. It’s hard to feel lonely when I’m writing dialog, or worry about my house selling when I’m trying to work through a character’s alibi.

    I’m not sure why it’s so different now than back in July. Perhaps it’s because I’ve loosened my grip on my outline, so I don’t have to think so far ahead?

    Whatever the cause, I’m grateful for it.

    → 9:00 AM, Sep 18
  • Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines

    Fantastic, pulpy action. I mean, it’s zombies vs superheroes, how could I not read this?

    The writing is sharp and moves along at a good clip, with a cinematic feel. Clines' use of flashbacks lets him bounce back and forth across the zombie apocalypse divide, deepening the characters and the world without slowing the action.

    Three things about writing I learned from this one:

    • Even in an ensemble book, focus on no more than half a dozen characters. I couldn't tell the non-superheroes apart in this one, and gave up trying to keep track of them all. The heroes were all well-fleshed out, but the regular humans were extras, and who watches a movie for the extras?
    • Using flashbacks in short, quick bursts can let you jump in to the interesting part of the story immediately, building and keeping momentum behind the main storyline. Clines could have used the first third of the book to work through each heroes' timeline before the zombie apocalypse happened, but it would have resulted in a much slower book.
    • Don't be afraid of writing what you want to write. I'm sure there are plenty of people that would look down on the zombies + superheroes concept, but I'm glad Clines ignored all of them and wrote something this fun and entertaining.
    → 9:00 AM, Sep 16
  • The Only Thing Blocking Me is My Fear of Being Blocked

    Novel’s reached 37,510 words.

    My semi-pantsing of the thing is still working. The characters are starting to do and say things on their own now, which I’m taking as a good sign. It means I can relax my grip a little more, give them leeway to go through the story in their own way.

    I still get a sense of physical terror when I sit down at the keyboard, though. It’s been getting stronger every day the past week, as if each day’s success means I’m that much more likely to fail the next day. I know it’s not true, that the words will come if I just sit down and push them out.

    But fear isn’t rational. Sure, I’m not as worried anymore about making the first draft as perfect as it can be. Now I’m just worried about being able to write each day’s part of the draft at all.

    Only way I’ve found so far to defeat the anxiety is, of course, to write. Writing the day’s words pushes the fear back a little, proves once again that I can do this, that I can create something on the page.

    → 9:00 AM, Sep 11
  • Maybe I'm a Pantser

    Novel’s at 32,277 words.

    Most days I’ve managed to write more than my 250 word goal, hitting somewhere north of 500 words before stopping for the day. Those words are flowing more easily now, the scene building itself out as I keep asking myself “what the characters would do?” without regard for the rest of the plot I’ve outlined.

    I even found a way to make my inconsistencies consistent within the scope of the story, which was not only a pleasant surprise, but has helped me loosen the grip of my inner editor and just set words down on the page.

    We’ll see how long it lasts, but for now I’m going to ride the wave this technique is giving me.

    → 9:00 AM, Sep 4
  • The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

    One of those books I tried several times to read, failed to get into, and finally just plowed through.

    I’m glad I did. Stross has created a fantastic updating of the Lovecraftian mythos, blending it with computer science, government bureaucracy, spy thrillers, and comedy (yes, all four).

    The result doesn’t have the creepiness or the horror of the source material anymore, but is much more entertaining.

    (Incidentally, this is the third novel in the series. Yes, I started with the third one. No, I didn’t feel lost, but I did feel silly for not starting at the beginning.)

    Three things I learned about writing:

    • You can still get tension from a narrative told as a memoir. When your characters can go insane or become disembodied spirits, terrible things can happen to them but still leave them able to narrate.
    • Writing what you know can give you interesting twists on old material. Stross was a programmer for a while, and that kind of thinking is what makes his take on Lovecraft's old gods feel new.
    • Even in a first-person story, you can still show non-POV character scenes by cheating a little, and having the narrator imagine how they would have gone.
    → 8:00 AM, Aug 31
  • Back to Work

    Novel’s at 29,068 words: I’m back to working on it, and it feels great.

    The week off really helped me relax, as did spending time with my friends, getting out of the house and forgetting about the stress of moving for a while. I was only able to write a few hundred words on Saturday, but it felt like a victory.

    I’ve kept up a moderate pace since then, carving out enough time to write at least 250 words each day. I’m keeping the word goal low for now, letting myself go over it but also giving myself permission to stop when I hit 250. It’s a small number, but it’s more than zero, and a target I can hit.

    → 9:00 AM, Aug 28
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