A few years ago I went to Ad Astra and heard what was probably the best writing advice for someone like me (by which I mean someone with a lot of time but also a lot of 'projects', housework, etc with which to occupy myself). That ideas was: planning your time.
The speaker showed how if you plan your week - writing down all the chores, work, your writing time and actually allotting time for other projects, you can see how much time you have and GET EVERYTHING DONE. I tried it when completing my chick lit. Up until then I had the idea that chores should be done first, while realizing that by the time my chores were done I was too tired to write and ended up reading and doing other things with the rest of my day. By scheduling chore time into the day I could see that I had the time to write - when I was most awake and excited - AND time to do chores and other things. As an 'achiever', someone who needs to check things off my to do list in order to feel like I'm accomplishing something, it made writing time something I could schedule in as a necessity rather than a hobby. It became work - and work to be done before all my other work. I also learned I didn't need to rush myself when writing. I could spend an hour or more before moving onto daily chores because THE TIME WAS THERE.
I've been trying to get back into the habit of scheduling my time again. Not only did I waste less of it by surfing the internet or watching TV, I also get a lot more writing done.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Writer's Block
I've always assumed that writer's block only referred to that time when you sit down at your computer and stare at the white page in front of you. You want to write. You just can't seem to get started.
But writer's block can also be that time when you have no motivation to write at all. When you feel that novel you want to write weighing on you. I read once that a project like a novel is so large that it takes your brain a while to accept that you're actually going to try it. Until it can accept that fact, it simply stares blankly at the screen, waiting for something to happen.
I recently went through a period of this. I think in some way it's a good thing. It clears your mind. Allows you to do other work that might distract you once you get the 'inspiration' you're looking for. I've noticed in my own writing there are times when I feel the NEED to write - when the story WANTS to be told and I have to work on that novel every day in order to get it out of my system and into the world. That's when I do my best writing. When I know where the story is going and how to get there. If I'm not in one of those 'phases' writing is a chore. It's dull and uninspired. It's boring - both to write and read. I've found it's best to wait out those 'dry' periods while my brain works itself around whatever issue with the story is causing problems and start writing when my brain clicks back into knowing what to do and how to do it.
In the mean time, there's lots of other things to keep me occupied.
But writer's block can also be that time when you have no motivation to write at all. When you feel that novel you want to write weighing on you. I read once that a project like a novel is so large that it takes your brain a while to accept that you're actually going to try it. Until it can accept that fact, it simply stares blankly at the screen, waiting for something to happen.
I recently went through a period of this. I think in some way it's a good thing. It clears your mind. Allows you to do other work that might distract you once you get the 'inspiration' you're looking for. I've noticed in my own writing there are times when I feel the NEED to write - when the story WANTS to be told and I have to work on that novel every day in order to get it out of my system and into the world. That's when I do my best writing. When I know where the story is going and how to get there. If I'm not in one of those 'phases' writing is a chore. It's dull and uninspired. It's boring - both to write and read. I've found it's best to wait out those 'dry' periods while my brain works itself around whatever issue with the story is causing problems and start writing when my brain clicks back into knowing what to do and how to do it.
In the mean time, there's lots of other things to keep me occupied.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Show Don't Tell
This is the advice given to most writers when it comes to, well, everything. Telling your audience that the protagonist likes to eat pizza on the weekend isn't as effective as having the person simply order the pizza and enjoy eating it while watching TV.
I just read a post by Paperback Writer, where she relates a story that happened to her in a restaurant. She'd recently had surgery and her eye was affected by it. Her waitress believed - due to the 'shown' information, that her husband had hit her and treated the couple accordingly. Paperback Writer concludes with the moniker that we need to be aware that our readers may not see our hints the way we intend, and that sometimes we need to tell to get the right message across.
This actually brings up a different question for me. How much of stereotypes, how much misinformation about people, races, cultures, religions is due to literature showing rather than telling? We've been trained to take a few pieces of often disjointed information and pull together a so called composite picture from that.
If you saw a woman, sitting with her back to the room at a restaurant, wearing sun glasses that - once removed - prove she's sporting a black eye, what conclusion would you jump to?
What about the black man standing in line behind you, one hand in his coat pocket, obviously covering something? Would your first thought be that he's holding his wallet because it's a bad neighbourhood? Or would you think it was a gun - because that's the stereotype we've been trained to assume is the truth?
How about the Muslim woman wearing the hajib. Do believe she's wearing it because her husband is forcing her to or because she's a pious woman who honestly prefers it?
And why are we too afraid and ashamed to ask and discover the truth?
I'll never forget reading Black Like Me by John Griffin. I shook my head at a lot of the racist slurs being perpetrated against the African American population as described in his book. Growing up in Canada, born after the civil rights movement ended, I had never heard these things before. Nor had I realized how many people believed such slurs to be the truth. Or how many people continue to perpetuate such insidious lies rather than discover - or accept - the truth. The truth that people are inherently all the same. We have the same needs: food, shelter, heat and love, the same wants: to provide for our families, be successful and find happiness.
Maybe we need to discover a better way of writing. One that doesn't require jumping to conclusions. Or perhaps we need to realize that jumping to conclusions about characters in a novel is harmless - while doing the same with real people can be devastating.
I just read a post by Paperback Writer, where she relates a story that happened to her in a restaurant. She'd recently had surgery and her eye was affected by it. Her waitress believed - due to the 'shown' information, that her husband had hit her and treated the couple accordingly. Paperback Writer concludes with the moniker that we need to be aware that our readers may not see our hints the way we intend, and that sometimes we need to tell to get the right message across.
This actually brings up a different question for me. How much of stereotypes, how much misinformation about people, races, cultures, religions is due to literature showing rather than telling? We've been trained to take a few pieces of often disjointed information and pull together a so called composite picture from that.
If you saw a woman, sitting with her back to the room at a restaurant, wearing sun glasses that - once removed - prove she's sporting a black eye, what conclusion would you jump to?
What about the black man standing in line behind you, one hand in his coat pocket, obviously covering something? Would your first thought be that he's holding his wallet because it's a bad neighbourhood? Or would you think it was a gun - because that's the stereotype we've been trained to assume is the truth?
How about the Muslim woman wearing the hajib. Do believe she's wearing it because her husband is forcing her to or because she's a pious woman who honestly prefers it?
And why are we too afraid and ashamed to ask and discover the truth?
I'll never forget reading Black Like Me by John Griffin. I shook my head at a lot of the racist slurs being perpetrated against the African American population as described in his book. Growing up in Canada, born after the civil rights movement ended, I had never heard these things before. Nor had I realized how many people believed such slurs to be the truth. Or how many people continue to perpetuate such insidious lies rather than discover - or accept - the truth. The truth that people are inherently all the same. We have the same needs: food, shelter, heat and love, the same wants: to provide for our families, be successful and find happiness.
Maybe we need to discover a better way of writing. One that doesn't require jumping to conclusions. Or perhaps we need to realize that jumping to conclusions about characters in a novel is harmless - while doing the same with real people can be devastating.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Book Expo America 2009
I just came back from BEA in New York City. It's a forum for new ideas, mixing publishers, booksellers and more in conference sessions and a trade show. And boy, did it ever give me ideas. I'll be busy with my scififanletter blog over the next few weeks, but I intend to start planning and writing my novel in conjunction with that, so stay tuned for what I hope will become regular posts.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Back to the Drawing Board
Several years ago I started writing a fantasy prequel to a novel I'd completed. I took a break and wrote my chick lit because the romance was flowing and the fantasy was not. Once I'd finished the chick lit I thought it would be easy to get back into the fantasy. It was and it wasn't. I had the drive to write but the story just wouldn't budge. I wrote chapters - invented whole new scenes I hadn't planned on writing - but the actual story just wouldn't move forward.
So I decided it was a flawed idea and quit. Or thought that perhaps the idea was simply too big and I didn't have the skills to write such an epic story at this point in my career.
I've since come to the conclusion that I was too hasty in that pronouncement. The problem was: my timeline was simply too long. The chick lit took place within a few months. My previous fantasy was just over one month in duration - from the start of the novel until the end. This fantasy had the temerity of taking place over several years - years in which nothing happened. So there was a lot of detailed action, nothing and then more detailed action. I simply couldn't figure out how to make that 'nothing happened' realistic while at the same time explaining that, yes, of course stuff DID happen, it just wasn't important enough to write about.
The solution? Reduce the timeline. Why does this war have to take place over 8 years? Can't things progress faster while still showing the horrors of what war can do? Yes. It won't be a short timeline - it is a war after all - but it will be a timeline I can confidently write. This novel has too many good elements for me to simply toss it by the wayside. A few days to reconsider my outline, and then I can get to writing again!
So I decided it was a flawed idea and quit. Or thought that perhaps the idea was simply too big and I didn't have the skills to write such an epic story at this point in my career.
I've since come to the conclusion that I was too hasty in that pronouncement. The problem was: my timeline was simply too long. The chick lit took place within a few months. My previous fantasy was just over one month in duration - from the start of the novel until the end. This fantasy had the temerity of taking place over several years - years in which nothing happened. So there was a lot of detailed action, nothing and then more detailed action. I simply couldn't figure out how to make that 'nothing happened' realistic while at the same time explaining that, yes, of course stuff DID happen, it just wasn't important enough to write about.
The solution? Reduce the timeline. Why does this war have to take place over 8 years? Can't things progress faster while still showing the horrors of what war can do? Yes. It won't be a short timeline - it is a war after all - but it will be a timeline I can confidently write. This novel has too many good elements for me to simply toss it by the wayside. A few days to reconsider my outline, and then I can get to writing again!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Spelling
It's tough trying to get a foot in as an author when you're not the best speller. There's only so much help spell check can give. Sometimes the errors are simple typos. Sometimes they're not. The odd thing is, you can read quite well over the errors without (for the most part) losing the meaning. Yes, there are times when a letter seriously affects the meaning of the word, at which point you lose a lot of credibility, but it's amazing how much you can read with typos.
I read a chain email once that, using typos, explained that humans only need the first and last letters of a word to be correct for their brains to tell them the words, even if all the other letters are scrambled. Incredible. And yet, as impressive as our brains are, we like words spelled properly. It drives me nuts when I see posts using short forms that don't 'officially' exist. Or even non short forms, that just seem 'cool'.
And it's strange. When I read books (and other things) I hate finding typos. It feels like the person was being sloppy when, in fact, their eyes probably passed over the words, reading them as if they were spelled correctly. And it's so easy to miss letters and mistype them yourself. I find with my own work I often have to let it sit for a while and then print it out to find typos. If I edit on the computer I tend to read what I want the words to be rather than what they are.
In the writing business it's important to catch spelling mistakes before you post or submit work though. Editors look for any reason to disregard you, and bad spelling - even just one typo - seems to be a favourite reason to send work to the discard pile. It almost doesn't seem fair. Yet, from their point of view, if you have one typo you'll surely have more...
So, does anyone have tips on editing so that they can catch these tiny (or not so tiny) errors? Do you use spell check, beta readers, let the work rest for a while or some other tactics?
I read a chain email once that, using typos, explained that humans only need the first and last letters of a word to be correct for their brains to tell them the words, even if all the other letters are scrambled. Incredible. And yet, as impressive as our brains are, we like words spelled properly. It drives me nuts when I see posts using short forms that don't 'officially' exist. Or even non short forms, that just seem 'cool'.
And it's strange. When I read books (and other things) I hate finding typos. It feels like the person was being sloppy when, in fact, their eyes probably passed over the words, reading them as if they were spelled correctly. And it's so easy to miss letters and mistype them yourself. I find with my own work I often have to let it sit for a while and then print it out to find typos. If I edit on the computer I tend to read what I want the words to be rather than what they are.
In the writing business it's important to catch spelling mistakes before you post or submit work though. Editors look for any reason to disregard you, and bad spelling - even just one typo - seems to be a favourite reason to send work to the discard pile. It almost doesn't seem fair. Yet, from their point of view, if you have one typo you'll surely have more...
So, does anyone have tips on editing so that they can catch these tiny (or not so tiny) errors? Do you use spell check, beta readers, let the work rest for a while or some other tactics?
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Bad Blogger!
Looks like I haven't posted here in several months. Oops. In my defense I've been busy planning a wedding (mine) and had to get all the preliminary work done fast. Now I've got a bit of breathing room.
So...
For months I thought I'd post chapters from my chick lit. I know, I know. I'm a SciFi nerd and fantasy freak. Why did I write a chick lit? I can't tell you either. I didn't want to write it. I purposefully tried to get all the chick lit ideas out of my head so I could go back to my nice respectable fantasy but it just wouldn't let go. I like my chick lit - though I've rethought a few things and will probably be editing it sometime in the next few months (ah for more time in the day).
To keep things simple I'll post the chapter in a new post. While I've had several working titles, the one I like the most is:
Dating Plan Desaster
Enjoy.
So...
For months I thought I'd post chapters from my chick lit. I know, I know. I'm a SciFi nerd and fantasy freak. Why did I write a chick lit? I can't tell you either. I didn't want to write it. I purposefully tried to get all the chick lit ideas out of my head so I could go back to my nice respectable fantasy but it just wouldn't let go. I like my chick lit - though I've rethought a few things and will probably be editing it sometime in the next few months (ah for more time in the day).
To keep things simple I'll post the chapter in a new post. While I've had several working titles, the one I like the most is:
Dating Plan Desaster
Enjoy.
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