Tag: slingink

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
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!

Categories
Rymor writing

Introducing Rymor – a YAMUW

as in Yet-Another-Made-Up-Word.

What is Rymor?

Rymor is my new project in the spirit of Lesamy. It’s paul-speak for “Write More”. I know I’ve tried in the past to come up with a consistent writing regime. I’ve had some success with it actually. Even with things being more sporadic the discipline of needing a story delivered every two weeks (for Slingink‘s Eurofiction competition) has kept me honest, more importantly it has kept me finishing things. (I’m beginning to think 90% of writing is holding your nerve long enough to finish the first draft.)

But even with all that I wanted to bring some of the rigour and consistency, some of the discipline and frankly, the results of Lesamy to my writing. Now I know there’s only so far I can take it. With Lesamy if you burn more calories than you eat you will lose weight. All you have to do is find a diet and exercise regimen that achieves that and stick to it. The process is simple the hard part is in keeping going. I’ve proved I can do that. With writing there’s something else. You not only have to keep going, be consistent, work hard, you also have to find and express good ideas, you have to be smart and, depending on subject matter, it helps to be funny. There’s no simple formula to learn to be smarter and funnier.

So I know that there’s only so far hard work will get you. But on the other hand, the work is an enabler. If you have any talent (and I’m beginning to believe maybe I have a modest amount) then it takes work to make the most of it. In a pep talk email for NaNoWriMo Philip Pullman said:

The question authors get asked more than any other is “Where do you get your ideas from?” … What I usually say is “I don’t know where they come from, but I know where they come to: they come to my desk, and if I’m not there, they go away again.”

Seriously, What is Rymor?

So to the specifics. Rymor is simple. I will write for at least 45mins or 750words a day, every day. No varying it according to what day of the week it is. No days off. Every day is regular and consistent and habit-forming and that’s what I need.

Now when I say “no days off” I mean days when I’m at home. If I’m visiting friends or out all night straight from work then that’s ok. The main point is to not have a complicated weekly schedule.

Of course there will be days when I will work more than that – immediately before a deadline I imagine. That’s ok too – but Rymor defines the minimum.

The other part of Rymor, like Lesamy, is regular measurement. So every Wednesday from now on I’ll be posting a weekly word-count. I’ve worked out ways to count when I do a revision of an existing draft rather than writing from scratch. I’ve even done a basic spreadsheet. The idea is to see how much I’ve done and what I’ve done it on. I’ll probably have at least two or three things on the go at any one time. Lots of what I write, even now, is sort of brain-storming, mental clearing the throat stuff that never makes it directly into my stories but which seems to be necessary. Keeping track of all this I hope will be not only encouraging but will allow me to see where I’m spending my time and alternate so I don’t get bored or disillusioned with any one thing.

Anyway that’s the theory. I’ll let you know how I get on next Wednesday.