Learning as a writer

Lately, I've been rewriting. In fact, to rephrase that, I've been learning how to rewrite the first draft. To do this, I've read several very good books on how to structure stories, craft, and I'm going to share my thoughts on these 'how to' books in the coming weeks and months, I'm sure.

For now, I'll just say that the information has helped me realise that not only do you have to sit down and type away, word after word, sentence following from the next, but there has to be a sound structure to the writing, otherwise, the story falls flat.

I have begun to notice this in the books I now read, and I hope that skill will transpose to my own ability to objectively edit my stories. I'm very much on a steep learning curve: one that I am enjoying, but also striving for perfection - is there ever such a thing in one's writing?

A short break

After a short break, whilst spending some precious last few weeks with a dying relative, it seems strange to be sharing my writing life and my thoughts again. Although it feels as if I've been away for such a long time, in reality it's only about three weeks -- just as long as some summer vacations! Normal service is being resumed, and I have a couple of posts in the pipelines about books I've been reading, and what is helping me (finally) in understanding the writing process.

I also got my results back from the literature module I was studying, overall Grade 2 pass, which is as good as I expected. In addition, I passed my short introductory course on Shakespeare, and I look forward to the next module which begins in October.

First Novel: Keeper or Loser

Just as everyone has a love they find difficult to forget and move on from, I believe every writer has a first novel that stays with them long after the passion has been extinguished. Face it, the affair is over! But no, I know how to fix what was wrong all this time, give me five more years.  Know the feeling? But can it be harmful to keep the previous project burning bright when the time comes to move on?

Thing is, some first novels deserve to stay hidden in the closet, happily to be forgotten in the mists of antiquity, others may have a spark about them, set to rekindle and are worth keeping, even if in the distance, at arms length, just in case. Just in case what, exactly?

My childhood reading consisted mainly of Doctor Who books. It's no wonder the first book I tried to write was science fiction. I wrote and re-wrote the same story for around five years, and if anyone thinks that's a long time, you haven't tried being a writer! The thing is, every time I re-wrote, I was re-dreaming the dream until it became a clear and focused land. Even though I had little technical knowledge, the place and setting became tangible, so much so, it's never really left my head, and if I ever dragged it from the closet, I could easily re-emerge myself in that creation. But I've moved on, I have a brand new story. I'm creating new characters, and I have the experience, tools, techniques to make this story a better place.

The question is when do you let go. How can you ignite your passion if you're still hankering after the past writerly-you. Do you have to let go completely to re-dream a different dream, live another character and love the new world you're creating for yourself?

The interviewer

This week, I’v e been at a training course for research and interview methods (among other things), and although the course was very good, there were a few people there who didn’t last the three days. As the days unfolded there was much deliberation, because people come to the course from very disparate directions, and there were moments of real bathos. Out of eight people who were to start, only four of us managed to complete successfully.
What did I get out of the course:

• A story to write about.
  
• A business idea to develop
  
• Insight
  
• And the buffet lunches were very nice, indeed!

I think there’s more to come on this particular experience.

General rules and guidelines

Although the title of this post may be suggestive of some writing guidelines, it really has nothing at all to do with the craft, or the how-tos and wherefores of writing. It’s more about personal goals and achievements, and I suppose, there is just a little bit about intertwining life with writing.

I have two sets of to-do lists. One is for my writer goals and achievements, and the other is general life goals and achievements. My intention at the beginning of the year was to make a blog post at least once a week. Why? Because I wanted to add this to my list of writing goals. After a flurry of deadlines throughout January, I’ve pretty much kept to it.

This post, then, is about making your own general rules and guidelines and applying them in your life. I’m so used to making these for myself, I tend to forget there are other people around me, and sometimes, I reckon that can make me insular, but it’s also what helps me focus time around writing.

Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, And never regret anything that made you smile.

Whose chair is it anyway?

We writers tend to carry on despite many uphill struggles, despite life throwing catastrophic events at us, and despite life always getting in the way of our muses. So, it was perhaps a relatively minor debacle this morning when my cat cat beat me to my chair and looked at me with a rather territorial glance. When I DID try and sit down, he just budged up looking ever so slightly squashed. Obviously he decided the chair much more appealing today, thank you very much. So he lorded it on my precious writing chair, while I spent my time sitting next to the floor on the bean bag. And this is the way we stayed for much of the morning. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the answer to the initial question is: It's obviously the cat's chair. 

From the Cat's Point of View

The story I've written today has a cat as its main character. It's a style I've been eager to try since reading Suite Français by Irene Nèmirovski. This excerpt from her novel shows how, in the middle of her story, she switches focus to the pet cat, creating an eerie atmosphere, building tension, and exploring the scene in a way  that none of the human characters could have provided.

He eyed the distance from the drainpipe to the ground. It was an easy jump, but he appeared to want to flatter himself by exaggerating the difficulty of the leap. He balanced his hindquarters, looking fierce and confident, swept his long black tail across the drainpipe and, ears pulled back, leapt forward, landing on the freshly tilled earth. he hesitated for a moment, then buried his muzzle in the ground. Now he was in the very black of night, at the heart of it, and the darkest point. He needed to sniff the earth: here, between the roots and pebbles, were smells untainted by the scent of humans, smells that had yet to waft into the air and vanish.

It's a barely concealed truth that people who shut themselves away for long periods of time love the mostly unintrusive companionship a cat can provide - barring the furniture [leg] scratching, manic half hours and 'mews' of 'feed me'. But to write about one in such an elegant manner, is a triumph of artistic merit.

The first draft

After working from scratch with a new story over the past couple of days, I see the truth in this statement. I've been writing a short story for a specific theme. Beginning with a vague idea of what I wanted to write, adding in a little twist for the ending, and the first copy was ready in little over an hour. But it certainly wasn't very good in terms of the story I wanted to tell.

It took a full day of re-writing, and two or three shorter edits before it was ready to send off.

It's a goal

I work with goals. Maybe it's my business training that makes me want to organise myself in a rigid manner, and partake in goal setting, but I think there's more to it than that. When you have many different projects on the go, planning becomes essential.

I've come to a halt with the nano project I've been working on, and I'm a little behind actual wordcount, but it can't be ALL about the wordcount, although getting to 50000 is fun, exciting and utterly exhausting. I also have another goal with this nano. I want to be able to produce work that is worthy of taking further, i.e., crafting, shaping and editing after all the faff of national novel writing month.

There are two short stories to write before the end of November, and these absolutely need to be in tip-top condition, so my writing schedule is pretty hectic to say the least, and I'm not even counting the business writing that's been on the back-burner for a very long time.

These are my goals for today:

1. To write roughly between 5000 and 8000 words
2. To work on my scy-fi story, currently about halfway through. 
3. To plan some more on a short story.

Better get scribbling then.

On being productive: concentration, passion and scribbling

"The sun's energy warms the world. 

But when you focus it through a magnifying glass it can start a fire. 

Focus is so powerful!" 

Alan Pariser

Words from nowhere

Writing an essay while trying to do nano is a 'never again' on my todo list. Thankfully, the next one isn't due until after November, which gives me time to go do some reading and planning - the way I do with my fiction writing.

When I sat down to write my fiction this afternoon, I was glad I'd taken half an hour after finishing last night to consider where the story was going, and provide myself with some plot markers, otherwise, I may have faltered. I needed to do some quick writing to keep my writing on target.  

What I've learnt so far - planning is important. I'm worried that I'll get halfway through and then start slogging through that dreaded swampy middle. I've done it before, and I'm determined to avoid it this time, so it looks like some careful planning will be going on the next couple of days, to make the next few weeks of writing a little easier. 

NaNoWriMo - Day One

This is my fourth nano, but it's the first one for which I've done any type of planning. Alongside nano, I have been sidetracked by an essay which is due for completion on the 2nd, and a new teaching module which also  began today. Add to that, I still want to continue working on the science fiction story I started to write a couple of weeks ago, and still have time to write all those short stories!!

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had a couple of ideas and had started planning both, but only managed to pull them apart this morning when I realised that I hadn't put enough planning into either of them. So now, it's going to be more of a winging it novel writing, instead of the carefully planned story I wanted to write.

To my own amazement, after not writing very much all year, in fact, for the past two years, I've written half a novel, and the current wip of around 12,000 words, I managed to write the first 1794 words with ease, in between essay writing, shopping, cooking, meetings, and teaching prep. However, day two will be a challenge, as the essay needs to be finished, and although I have a structure, it still has to be given some form.

For now, I'm going to plan my next two or three scenes for tomorrow's writing.

God in the Machine

I now have nearly 10,000 words for my short story, God in the Machine, which I think is long for a short, but not so short for scifi, or even the cyberpunk genre. It may, of course, continue to be written and turn into a short novel.

Whatever it is, it's fun to write, even though it's not helping me prepare for November's novel writing exercise. I'm still in the middle of planning my steampunk novel for that, and it is going to be fun to write as well.

Writing 5k

Writing Goal

You'd think that writing 5,000 words in one day on a  piece of fictive writing would be extremely difficult. It's not the sort of thing you'd do every day. Today, I achieved what I set out to do, and then some. Total for my five hours of writing this morning is 5154.

Am I chuffed. You bet I am. 

How did this work?

I wanted to write some of my scifi short story for an anthology next year. It can be between 3,000 and 15,000 - which at the upper echelons of that scale strikes me as pretty extensive for a short story. I'm aiming for between 8500 and 12,000, although I know this story could easily be of short novella length from 25,000 upwards, but that's not my aim. I hope to write more, then do some priming.

Do I think the writing is of publishing quality - no. It's a first draft, which means it's rough, but there's a great story that will polish up beautifully when it comes to editing. 

Writing in the Alternative

As the title of this post suggests, alternative could mean anything from words, through to worlds, and histories. Just before nanowrimo begins in a couple of weeks time, I wanted some new short stories to edit and play with while I'm stuck, knee deep in novelling. With that in mind, I've set myself a goal of writing at least two, perhaps even more short stories for specifically defined markets or magazines. To start with, I've identified two anthologies due to be published next year for my shorts. I've written hard syfy (for fun and flash) before and found it to be too detailed and constrained, preferring to let the imagination run a little wild and make up plausible explanations for the way things work the way they do, so the syfy effort will be soft.

Although, I've written for the romance market in this way and had some success, this is my first foray into serious writing for syfy, fantasy, and steampunk markets.

Gladly, 'writing in the alternative' doesn't mean I have to use one of these, I much prefer my AlphaSmart when I go offline.

The task of learning, rediscovering and writing

Today, I picked up a short story I wrote about four years ago. It was perhaps one of the first short stories I wrote. At the time, I didn't like it very much - in fact, I didn't like much of what I wrote - but there were people who did see something in it, even if it wasn't perfect, and their comments helped shape the story into something that was more ordered.

Re-visiting the story and the critiques it received, helped me to figure out that I was missing some steps in creating what is called the story: That it takes far more than a little creativity to craft and hone words into something that is readable and structured in a way that is admissible as a story. (In my rather humble opinion, Katherine Mansfield could do it, where Woolf couldn't).

What I learnt from looking over it from such a distance - four years is a long time, after all - is just how much I have continued to learn about what actually makes a successful story; how to structure and plot, and that even when writing shorts, the same basic principles of storycraft still apply. In other words, there is no short-cut to writing a story.

Now. The task at hand is to re-write a long-forgotten story using these newly discovered writing tools. 

The Art of the Multi-tasker

While planning for my new project, I realised that the first part is relatively easy. You have ideas for two or three characters in your head, they have names, faces, characteristics. Heck, something even happens (this, the inciting incident on the plot chart), and then it takes a bit more effort to think of something beyond what it was that demanded your attention in the first place.

The plot arc looks lop-sided, with one-third scribbled on and the other four-fifths blank, that's how much logic you're left with when the imagination takes over! But it feels like there's nothing else to write about. The mind goes suddenly blank, and then you think...

Then what!

When the question is supposed to be

What if?


Today, the answer seemed to be to write what is already known about the story - the introduction. I knew that I had a cracking opening sequence, and wanted to get it onto paper. I wrote a few hundred words that exploded onto the page, introducing the main characters and their reaction to the inciting incident, whilst creating a book full of questions. And now, I had a bit more substance to progress with the initial goal of the day: The planning process.

Perhaps writing and planning aren't meant to be tasks undertaken in isolation, but carried out simultaneously.

Brainstorming

I was ready to create an adult world where love and romance is hot and steamy, but it didn't materialise. Instead, I came up with ideas for a YA novel, and so, this is the story that I'm going to go with - call it gut instinct or whatever else you like, but if that's the story that arrives in your head, and knocks to be let in, it must, at least be given some worthy consideration.

Brainstorming is a funny old pastime.

Grounding the Plot

At the moment, I'm at the plotting stage of a new writing project. I always find the beginning very difficult to navigate. There are too many possibilities wandering around; the imagination becomes something that is wild and untameable. Some ideas are far too fanciful, some breathtaking with no real substance, some meandering forever, going nowhere at all. It seems a gigantic task to pluck several beings, with given characteristics and house them in their settlements, whether colourful and exotic lands, watching them soar the skies, ramble through forests and over mountains, or make them urban creatures living in squalid accommodation, allowing them to walk along dark, creepy alleys and dull-lit streets, drinking in lowly pubs and visit seedy motels.

Sounds like being a kid in a candy store, but it can become overwhelming. In trying to impose some order on the chaos, I have my plot graph already lined up, and a to-do list for when the brainstorming session dies down.

1. Outline story in two or three paragraphs.

2. Plot five point arc: -

• Inciting incident
• Primary incident
• Midpoint
• Climactic Event
• Resolution

* I am also re-visiting a favourite book:

Plot and Structure, by James Scott Bell

The Notebook

Just watched The Notebook. What a beautiful, moving story it was. It made me think about how beauty of emotion is created. Visually, it worked well with actors being emotive, but I'd now like to read the novel upon which it's based, to see how it's done through words - even if watching first and reading second is doing things the wrong way around.

This quote from the film, sums up its premise. 

"I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason,every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, every day we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours." 

What does it teach us about writing, or story-telling in general?

That a story needn't be over-complicated to be poignant and meaningful.  Keep it simple and let your characters live through their emotions.

Another passage:

"I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough."    

Can be likened to a lasting tribute to the story premise, where the beginning and ending fuses, melding into one. The story becomes symmetrical, and finding that symmetry in writing is extremely satisfying and emotive if we've bought into the characters and the issues they've faced, the mountains they've climbed and the hurdles they've overcome.

 Nope. I'm not a movie critic. Just a casual observer.