Category: writing

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NaNoWriMo NaNoWriMo 2011 writing

I’m Doing It Again

NaNoWriMo that is.

I’ve tried twice before – 2006 and 2008 – and both times I quit after a few days and a couple thousand words or so. To be fair in 2006 my laptop died 4 days in and although I had other computers to write on (and eventually bought the laptop I’m typing on now) it rather took the wind out of my sails.

I’ve avoided it since then despite feeling a ‘tug’ every Oct/Nov. It’s a seductive idea – give yourself to something completely for 30days and at the end have something, a novel, to show for it. The argument against is that any novel I write under those conditions won’t be very good and may not even be salvageable in the edit.

However I’ve decided to do it anyway because what is life without attempting things that might not work. And even if the end result isn’t the best I’m going to try to make the process fun.

So I’ve joined the forums, added buddies from the Ship of Fools, added NaNos to my Google+ circles and downloaded and installed some new software.

My big plan to succeed this year is to actually have a plan this year rather than simply an idea and then start writing (known in NaNo-speak as a ‘pantser’) and in order to facilitate planning I’ve installed Scrivener which has a special NaNo trial version that expires 7th Dec. It also has a Linux Beta which works really well. So far I’m loving it.

So expect a series of updates on progress. Not sure how frequent. Possibly I’ll do a daily word-count check-in on G+ and a weekly report here.

Here’s my NaNo profile if you want to add me.

Categories
writing

Writing as Magic

Writing as Magic

So last week I talked about writing as exercise i.e. takes effort but done regularly reaps rewards. But exercise has a certain mechanical, mathematical even, rule to it – if I do an hour’s worth of exercise I will burn a certain amount of calories. I can do it grudgingly. I can be in a bad mood. I can be unmotivated and only just manage it, or I can skip along happily. Doesn’t matter, do the work and the calories burn and a certain amount of progress has been made toward the goal.

Writing isn’t like that.

Not quite anyhow. Because it’s creative the goal is to produce something worthwhile. Perhaps not straight away and we can be patient about the level of quality but not all writing is equal. I can spend an hour writing and produce nothing but pages of ‘ideas’ and ‘brainstorming’ that aren’t anything that can be shared or published. Or I can spend the same hour writing a story that someone might read and enjoy.

But it’s not guaranteed. This is the scary part. Working hard or consistently isn’t enough.

However I kinda sorta don’t worry about that. My attitude and experience is that creativity will flow. When or how inspiration will strike I don’t know. But it does so more if I’m actually writing and it can only be turned into something shareable if I am actually writing. And an idea in my head is wonderful but it’s only something I actually write and finish and can share that really counts.

So you sort of have to have faith in the magic of it. You sit down. You’re tired, uninspired, in a bad mood and feeling lacking in any talent or confidence. Any you start to write. Anything. Ideas. Thoughts about themes, characters, words, phrases, scenes, visual ideas, snippets of dialogue. For me it’s most often writing about writing and then asking myself questions – how does this work? where does he come from? how does she feel?

And I write for my allotted time and maybe, probably for the first few sessions, I have nothing. But eventually, if I keep at it, the magic happens, the spark comes from where-ever it comes from and ideas start to flow. Better than that I actually start to like what I’m writing.

But it’s not guaranteed. I have no idea how it really works just that I do certain things and then it happens. A few days later, particularly if I haven’t written in between times or am working on a new project, I may be back to feeling like I have nothing. So I start over with my brainstorming and journaling and just typing whatever comes into my head. And hope/believe/pray that it happens again.

Repeat the ritual, keep the faith, wait for the fire to fall.

Reliable but unpredictable – magic.

Writing Done this Week

Well I was back at work this week and predictably that has meant I haven’t written as often or as much. I’ve only written on three of the last seven days. Each time though I wrote for 30mins and overall I wrote about 1565 words. Most of that was in the form of ideas though i.e. the kind of rambling I described above.

I did write the first draft of an idea for the TWI Monday flash, but the deadline was Friday 9pm and since I didn’t write at all that day I missed it. I may come back to the idea but it was very slight and to be honest it’s not one of my favourites.

I wrote some thoughts on how to do a sequel/re-write of a story I wrote a few years ago. M. told me it was her favourite of mine and that I should write something similar. I’m not sure how so I wrote about that (see above re: questions)

This evening I wrote mostly brainstorming ideas for Web Writer’s September challenge – which is to write a 3,500 word story called “Hunting Season”. Actually a lot of my thoughts were about combining it with “airship” and another idea I’ve had called “the purpose of flight” – these may still be three stories but may take place in the same world.

Categories
writing

Writing as Exercise

As of today, I’m instituting a new weekly blog post about writing. Just as I always do an L3 post on a Monday[1] I’m now going to do a post about writing on a Wednesday. Since I couldn’t think of a name that I didn’t hate I’m not going to give it one. It’ll simply be the weekly writing post.

The idea will be to give myself a sense of accountability and progress. I can update you on my current projects and any insights into the writing per se.

Writing as Exercise

I’m doing this because I have started writing again. And I’ve started writing again on the basis that writing is like exercise. In that:

  • it’s hard to face doing when you haven’t done it for a while
  • it’s always a little hard to get going but enjoyable when you do
  • still it’s always going to be easier not to bother
  • but you do it because you want the long term results
  • doing it regularly, possibly every day, is a good idea
  • doing it every day makes it easier to get started
  • doing it every day makes it more effective
  • progress is gradual but real

Current Projects

Here’s a list of things I’ve been working on. I’m not going to give too much details here and may even resort to code names rather than titles (I’m a bit weird about talking about stuff that’s still in the early stages) and it’s not my intention to discuss specifics or give excerpts or anything like that. I mostly want to track progress.

TWI Monday Flash – The Write Idea is a writing forum I’m part of and they run a weekly flash fiction competition (250 words). I wrote a piece called “Looking for the Other Aardvark” about Noah. The prompt (that I used) was “it’s going to rain”. I got a couple of votes. There were I think 6 entries overall and the winner scored 4.

Web Writers August Challenge – This is an email list I’m part of. Yesterday I wrote a ~650word story on a theme of a change of attitude/latitude. Today I re-wrote it and it came to 999words. I was quite happy with the results even though I got latitude and longitude the wrong way round. D’oh!

The Young Poisoners Club – this is a story I submitted to an online competition I was part of in 2008. It’s the only one of several such competitions where I’ve completed each round. Anyway, when I started about a week and a half ago thinking about writing again at first I had no inspiration. So I looked at re-writing something and this was it. Sent it to Web Writers and got some nice feedback but realised I’d done little more than tweak it when it needs some structural changes. I may look at making it a play.

The Magic Witch – oh now this is a semi-mythical piece of work. I started it in 2003 and have gone back to it a couple of times but never managed to finish it. It’s a children’s story. In its current form it has, or had until a few days ago, a beginning, an ending and a part in the middle with the words “MISSING MIDSECTION” in bold. I’ve now written some notes sketching out the missing midsection. All I have to do now is write it.

Radio play – I’ve had this idea that I’d like to write a radio play. Aside from possibly converting YPC above I scribbled down an idea called “airship“. No more than notes on an idea for a sort of theme and a character.

World/Feeling – this is super-vague. If I had to describe my own work then I’d say that most of my stories are cute ideas or twist-in-the-tail stories. What I’d like to be able to do is create a sense of a world, a character or just a tone. Like I said, vague.

Well that was quite a lot. Mind you that’s almost two weeks’ worth and I’ve been on holiday. Back to work tomorrow but I do intend to still write every day.

[1]I know, I know. I’m going to do a catch-up, possibly tomorrow.
Categories
writing

The Harsh Light of Day (flash fiction)

This is a flash piece I wrote almost a year ago. I believe the prompt was “concrete”.

The Harsh Light of Day

They found me in the shade of the car-park overhang, all eager smiles and hard eyes. The sounds of breaking glass tinkling through the warm air were my first warning.

“Oi. Fairy!”

I looked for an escape route but it was sunny and I wasn’t desperate enough. Yet.

“C’mere. Got a present for you.”

Present? I doubt it. No future that’s for sure. I cursed them under my breath. Not that it meant anything now. Not like the old days.

They came at me running, with chrome-plated boots and shards of mirrored glass. They call them the shiny boys. Fancy themselves scourge of my kind.

My kind. Once held in wonder, and fear. Mystery was our habitat but their kind destroyed it, along with the rain forests and polar ice-caps. Their pushing inquisitiveness, their blunt weapon of science forced us out of the shadows, out of dark corners, out from the fringes and edges, into the light.

Now they know us and our weakness.

They flashed their mirrors, reflected rays slicing and spearing me. I pushed back against the wall of stone behind.

But it wasn’t stone, nothing so natural.

Wondering why they hate us I felt myself sink into it. Perhaps we bring to mind half-remembered notions that they feared. Or longed for.

Suffocating in the steel reinforced pillar I realise: we make their worst nightmares, and best lost dreams, real.

Flimsy as my body is — even light will pierce it — it’s too concrete for them.

Categories
writing

Feeling Smug about Crap

I just finished a first draft of my task 1 Eurofiction story. As is normal for first drafts it’s pretty crap. But I feel smug about it – why?

Well…

After all the work-related stuff that I’ve alluded to I really haven’t done any writing, or even really thought about writing, since last Thursday. So my plan for “week one = draft one” will have to wait for task 2. It meant that with a couple of days to go I had to write something from scratch. OK, not quite scratch because I’d had ideas but nothing that was more than a vague concept.

Also, I was feeling happy about the work thing and feeling like sitting back and relaxing and savouring the moment. Not feeling like forcing my brain to come up with a story. I like writing (sort of) but it’s work too. Hard work.

The point is – I really didn’t feel like writing tonight. Even after, during my walk, discovering a pretty nice little idea, and developing into an outline in my head – even so I knew I’d likely get back, feel tired and just want to slump in front of the TV. Leave the writing for tomorrow since I’ve still got time.

But I didn’t. I sat down and knocked out draft 1. Complete. Crap but complete. And I’m smug not just because I did it but because it’s normally exactly the point where I’d procrastinate myself into a bad mood.

Of course I think the possibility of missing round 1 was bad enough to motivate me, but even so I feel I justified in my smugness.

Categories
writing

That’s More Like It – The Fear Returns

Yesterday I tried to write and…

No wait that’s not true. Yesterday I thought I should write. Because it’s the weekend and I have lots more time. Because I wanted to get a head-start on a draft 1. Because I want to have a fighting chance of doing a re-write rather than a last minute polish/check for typos.

But I didn’t. I got ate and drank instead. I ignored the need to write and ignored my diet.

Why?

Well  because the ‘fear’ returned. It’s a weird thing to try to explain to other, non-crazy, people but the idea of writing can make me feel afraid. Obviously it’s not a fear for my physical safety or well-being. It’s more that I worry that I’ll fail and that that will be really really bad. Or that I’ll find out finally and definitively that I’m not any good and destined always to be a something-in-computers rather than a writer. To be honest even as I write this there’s a part of me shying away from thinking too hard about the fear.

But in a weird way I’m glad I felt it again, even if it stopped me writing yesterday. Without sounding too pretentious I think that if I’m not feeling that then it means I’m not pushing myself, which means I’m not producing anything worthwhile. I kinda feel writing should be hard – not just hard work as in time spent and energy invested but hard psychologically. It should require digging into yourself and asking searching questions. Because in the end all you’ve really got to offer as a writer is yourself and how you see the world.

Maybe that’s it – maybe if I was a healthy, well-balanced, emotionally together person I wouldn’t feel it was so hard to write because I wouldn’t have any fear of putting myself on paper and letting others see it. As it is I want/need to and fear it at the same time.

The real trick – and this is where I went wrong yesterday – is to not run away from the fear but confront it and do it anyway.

Categories
writing

Enjoying Writing

I’ve just been writing, and enjoying it.

This is weird for me because I usually hate it. I love the idea of it. I love having done it. I quite like the editing process, especially if I’m weeding out the excess words to make a flash hit its limit. But I don’t normally love the writing itself. But at the moment I am.

I think it’s partly because I haven’t done any for ages so I’m coming back to it fresh. Partly it’s that I’m trying to follow this idea I read about where you do 20 mins a day and stop when you hit the time limit, even in the middle of a sentence. Especially in the middle of a sentence as that gives you somewhere to pick up on.

Actually I’ve done more than the 20mins for the three nights this week that I’ve been doing it. At least my ‘writing time’ has been up to 2 hours and more but time actually spent on a personal project has been 20mins – or a little more. The rest has been reviews and crits and reading others stories and writing forums. Also tonight I spent some time organising my folders and creating a document template for the Eurofiction ‘house style’.

I’m also at the beginning of a lot of things. I’ll list my current projects in a second, but it feels like I have all this time stretched out in front of me. Days and days before I have to hand anything in. So I can spend a few minutes noodling around and brainstorming and well, playing, without having to worry about forming it into a story. But actually that’s ok. Because all joking aside if I avoid the 10 days of procrastination and 2 days of actual work of my “stages” then even actually putting ideas down at all gets me one step ahead. If none of my ideas are formed, at least outlined, as real stories by this time next week then…

Current Projects

Eurofiction Task 1 – got the prompt for the first round of EF 2009 last night just after midnight. A choice of three settings for an argument. I’ve sketched out vague ideas for all three and real possibilities for a couple.

AFO September Challenge – this one’s a good one. There are about 5 required elements – Travel, Alcohol, Loss, Dialogue and something Jaw-dropping. Except that none of them are required if you really don’t want them to be as long as the story’s good. So they’re more jumping off points, inspiration. I’m glad the challenge setter took this approach. Sometimes these multi-requirement challenges can be more about puzzle than prompt. Which is fine but I do the challenges to improve my writing not to prove I can fit 14 Beatles lyrics into a 500-word story about ducks. Anyway I’ve got an idea for this and I like it.

TWI Monday Flash – a 250-word flash competition that runs from Monday evening to Friday night. I’ve got a 270-word rough draft of an idea that’s fun but silly. I’ll polish and bring it up to 300 and then pare it back down to the needed 250.

It’s interesting because if you look at deadlines etc then I should work on TWI (tomorrow at 9pm) then EF (13 days and a couple of hours) then AFO (a whole month, nearly) but it’s measure of how much I like my AFO idea that I’ve worked on it tonight anyway. Though to fend off potential guillt I have in fact worked on all of them tonight.

Oh and I wrote in my blog

😉

Categories
writing

Stages of Eurofiction

I’ve signed up again for SlingInk‘s Eurofiction short story competition. Fourteen weeks, seven rounds and hopefully seven new stories. It all starts with the first round’s prompt revealed at midnight tonight.

Last year in the midst of this madness I wrote what follows about the two-week cycle of getting prompts, writing stories, submitting them and getting feedback and scores.

The Stages of Eurofiction

  • Stage one: procrastination. I’ve got loads of time, why rush it? My sub-conscious needs time to brew.
  • Stage two: head-scratching and brain-storming – this usually involves writing whatever drivel is going through my head until…
  • Stage three: an idea! This is one of the two enjoyable stages. Technically it’s not actually writing and usually happens away from the keyboard. It’ll last for anything up to five minutes before…
  • Stage four: disillusionment with idea. This stage usually does occur at the keyboard when I’m actually trying to write down my beautiful idea.

At this point I’ll usually go back to stage one and so we go around the loop a few times. Eventually though I’ll make it past stage four either because – I finally have an idea I’m happy with for more than five minutes or (more likely) deadline is looming. Which leads to

  • Stage five: exploring the idea. This is a stage where I pretend I’m a real writer and do things like write character bios, plot outlines, snippets of dialogue etc. In theory that’s what I do. In practice I usually spend a lot of time googling vaguely related topics as “research” (see also stage one)
  • Stage six: draft draft 1. Not to be confused with an actual draft, i.e. attempt at the story, this is a draft that I will almost certainly throw away. It’s filled with meta-commentary (i.e. the narrative will be interspersed with “omg how crap was that?”/”what a cliche – is that the best you can do Paul”). and what I call “general outline” (e..g I’ll write “and then he says something cool and then something interesting happens“) Draft draft 1 usually involves no more than 250 words that can actually be considered story, all of which will be scrapped.
  • Stage seven: Actual draft 1 (part 1). It’s probably less than 48 hours until the deadline now so I’ll make a concerted effort. If I came up with a useful outline in stage five I’ll use that as a guide. But it’s only a guide I can divert from it when I think of something better. Word count is now 500. Estimated word count to do justice to the story, 2500.
  • Stage eight: draft 1 (part 2). Deadline 24 hours away. Realise that the outline is crap and needs major re-organise. Realise that my part 1 is crap and needs re-writing. Promise myself I will do this just as soon as I have a complete draft 1. Word count surges up to 700 words.
  • Stage nine: Deadline 14 hours away. In desperation I’ve gotten up early to write. Still plugging away at draft 1. Crap outline is now fixed in stone as no time to change it. Curse the idiot who left me things like “he says something cool” to expand on. Wonder what the point is and why I ever thought I can write. My whole life is worthless, women will hate me and small children will point and laugh. By dint of great effort and pure act of the will force the word count up to 950.
  • Stage ten: Deadline 2 hours away. Have rushed home from work leaving important client hanging and probably pissed off my boss. Am now actually convinced that this is pure crap but all that matters is finishing. All pretension to art or talent is gone, stubbornness is all that remains. Word count 1500.
  • Stage eleven: Deadline 15 minutes away. I have finally finished! Draft 1 that is. Now for that ahem, final polish. This is simply a quick read to spot typos, spelling and grammar mistakes. Correct as many of these as I can whilst studiously ignoring massive plot holes, logic problems and other weaknesses it’s too late to fix. Achieve a Zen-like state of denial so that whilst simultaneously recognising the crap that is my story I maintain enough motivation to actually finish the process.
  • Stage twelve: deadline +/- 1 minute (probably +1 but let’s not tell the judges that) Finally hit send. I am done. The sense of relief is a pure joy. This is the other enjoyable stage. This is the purpose of writing. Like beating your head against a wall, it’s so good when it stops!
  • Stage thirteen: (actually part of stage one of the next round) – waiting for score+feedback. Remind myself (without actually re-reading) of the odd phrase or bit of dialogue that I quite like. Manage to recall that sense of self-satisfaction I had with the original idea. Become secretly convinced it’s a work of genius.
  • Stage fourteen: score/feedback arrives. EITHER am deeply shocked and hurt that the judges didn’t recognise the splendour and excellence of my talent, OR am ridiculously proud of the mediocre score and few nice comments (despite the fact that they show that what the judges read in the story wasn’t what I intended and I’ve completely failed to convey the themes and ideas I originally had). Also notice comments like “Your plot/character/dialogue/grammar is weak, take a look at how Famous Author does it” and then tell all my friends that I’ve been compared to Famous Author.

(and yes writing this was part of stage one of task 6 last year)

Categories
reading TV writing

How to Improve as a Writer

“Just write every day, and read more often than you write”

*sigh*

I haven’t been very good at writing or reading lately. On the writing front I’ve only managed to edit a couple of stories and submit them to the Whittaker. That wasn’t my intent when joining it but at least it keeps me in the competition. If this is a temporary blip then I won’t have forfeit my place, if it isn’t then I’ll withdraw gracefully.

Having set aside The Crow Road I’ve not read any of Rum Doodle for the past couple of weeks. Thing is it’s a short book so I ought to be able to knock it on the head in a couple of hours. Might be an assignment for a rainy Bank Holiday weekend.

It’s not just reading and writing either. I haven’t watched a full length movie in ages. My MythTV box current has 80+ movies waiting to be watched. When I’m looking at the latest upcoming listings I’m choosing movies more often than other types of program to record. True this varies from “I really want to see that” to “might be worth a look” but none of them are getting a look right now.

It’s that whole short attention span thing. Must work on that.

*sigh*

Categories
writing

Once Again, Only GOOD this Time

One Competition Finishes…

So SlingInk’s Eurofiction is over. Actually for me it’s been over for more than a week but I finally got the final scores. For those that don’t know Eurofiction is SlingInk’s annual short story competition. 10 rounds over 20 weeks with the scoring following a ‘Eurovision’ model (top story gets 12, next two get 10, next two 9 and so on).

My goals for Eurofiction were simple:

  1. Finish it i.e. hand in a story for each round (I only managed two rounds of the Whitaker 2008)
  2. Write a new story each round

Well I finished and did complete each round. I wrote 9 new stories and only re-worked an old for one round because of a last minute work thing that meant I didn’t have as much time as I’d hoped. Once I realised what the scoring system was and that there were 32 entrants I added an extra goal:

  1. score in each round

I did score in each round though by round 6 all that required was that I kept entering due to the number of people no longer submitting. I didn’t win a round but I scored 10 twice. My lowest score was 2 (in round 2).

Lessons Learnt

What did I learn from SlingInk?

  1. That I am capable of not only finishing stories but doing so regularly
  2. That deadlines are great – they motivate you to finish stuff
  3. that deadlines are evil – they stress you out and cause you to hand in any old crap
  4. that what I like and what scores highly aren’t necessarily the same thing. My favourite stories of mine scored 2 and 6. My least favourite scored 10.

So Let’s Do It Again

In about 30 minutes[1] Whittaker 2009 starts and I’m entered. This is the short story competition of The Write Idea forum. I entered last year but dropped out due to lack of persistence. However buoyed by my success – in terms of finishing – in Eurofiction I’m going into this quietly excited. Plus I like the fact that I’ll be back on the deadline treadmill again. Like as in also hate it that is.

Whittaker’s similar to Eurofiction but there are a few differences:

  • Only 9 rounds
  • There’s a 2500 word limit – Eurofiction has no limit and in 2 of my entries I went over 2500.
  • The scoring is based on a 100-point system with so many for character, plot etc. I prefer this as I can see where I’m doing well. (though Eurofiction did have very helpful constructive feedback)
  • The scoring is based on the story itself not relative to the others. In theory all entrants could score exactly the same.
  • The prompts in Whittaker tend to be a bit more cryptic – but they are there more for inspiration than anything.

New Competition, New Goals

My goals for Whittaker 2009 look a lot like my ones for Eurofiction:

  1. Finish – enter each round
  2. Write new stories for each round
  3. Make the quality higher – write stuff you’re actually proud of.
  4. Win a round

Those last two are obviously linked. The incentive to win is that the winners get published in an anthology and whilst its the kind of thing largely bought by the writers and their friends and family, last year’s was really well put together.

But aside from winning I really want to make this about writing better. The great thing about the deadlines was it made me finish stuff on a schedule. The bad thing was that by the end of the competition I’d get to a deadline and all I cared about was having something to hand in. If this is to be about learning to write then I want these stories to be better.

How To Write Good

How am I going to achieve that? Simple really. My new rule is that I won’t allow myself to hand in a first draft. I sort of had this last time but in the end I was polishing the first draft, mainly for typos and spelling and calling it a second draft and entering that. This time I really won’t hand in draft one because the rule is I have to write draft two from scratch.

I did this with a couple of my first stories. I wrote an entire first draft then started again with a blank document. It works because you already know something about how the story should go. Any good bits, any really nice bits of writing, snappy dialogue or effective description you’ll remember anyway. Plus it allows you to just write without worrying about where it’s going because you already sort of know. Not that I’ll not re-configure the plot if that seems like a good idea.

I’m going to try to make “first week = first draft” my motto too – but I know the power/curse of deadlines – everything gets done, but it gets done last minute. We’ll see.

[1]or probably already has by the time I finished writing and formatting this post.[2]

[2]yep it has!