Oh, hey, it's Monday again.
In my continued adventures with getting back into the writing and publishing world, I've noticed an extreme shift in my approach to things. My plotting style is very similar to how it used to be, but I've incorporated a lot of new things. My note-taking has become simultaneously more and less complex, depending on what I'm taking notes about. Lots of little things have changed, and while I don't regret this, there's one major change that has involved a big learning curve.
I used to be very much focused on "write first, get it right later." I'd finish an entire book very quickly and spend ages going back to tweak, edit, revise, and change. I would refuse to let myself read back over anything I'd written, unless it was to get myself back into a scene I'd left halfway through. Produce crap, shine it up later--that was my policy.
Now, though? Now there's a lot less of that. The WiP I've been working on today was resurrected at the beginning of January, and I've been working on it a fair bit since then. I'm only a paragraph into chapter two, and I'm not planning on writing any further for a while.
Why? Because I'm trying so hard to get the previous chapters up to speed. I'm not trying to make them ready to print, of course, but I want them to be solid before I keep going. When I type out "the end," I want to go back to a story that is solid and doesn't leave me with something that needs to be rewritten and rewritten and rewritten to make it legible. I'm very much a person to say "let yourself write crap," but instead of going back to shine up the entire manuscript, I've been taking it a chapter at a time.
Honestly, I prefer this new method.
It may be just for this project; I'm not sure. This story has given me trouble in the past, and was subject to a great number of revisions and chapters-inserted-later that kind of bogged the original story down into a convoluted mess. Shining up each chapter so the details are clear and concise has helped me focus on getting everything going in the direction it needs to go. Much like plotting gives me a general map to my destination, this method of writing helps me enjoy each step of the journey instead of getting lost in the race to finish.
Obviously neither method is wrong, but I think, for this project at the very least, some perfectionism and lingering has helped me make something that keeps me from dreading each new day at the keyboard.
'Til next time,
J.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
The Index Cards Cometh
First off: whew, it's been a little while since I posted on schedule. Things have been a bit busy, and my birthday was Monday so my plans involved naps and cake. Now, though, things have quieted down and I'm back on track schedule-wise, so here we go with today's post:
Index cards. A common tool of the writer. Some people use them for jotting notes, some people use them for organizing scenes. Some use them for the basic stuff, some find them vital to their craft. Some don't use them at all, and until yesterday I counted myself among that crowd.
The lovely Mireyah Wolfe and I have been talking a lot about plotting lately. I'm a lifelong plotter, while she's never had a lot of experience with sitting down and planning out where her story is going to go. I suggested a few of my preferred techniques and recommended a book or two, and the next time I went over to her place to hang out, her dining room wall was plastered with ginormous index cards covered with notes. I admit, it made me smile to have made a convert to the world of plot, but I digress. It was those index cards that caught my eye. They were big enough to fit plenty of information, but small enough that they could be easily organized and moved around. In short, they were exactly what I'd been looking for over the past several weeks, and I was determined to get my hands on some.
Mires told me where to get some giant index cards of my very own, and so we made the trek to the local drugstore. Five bucks later, I had two packs of my very own, and I've since started to take down character profile notes and brief chapter outlines. I've never used index cards before now, but I'm finding more and more that they're a cheap, convenient way to organize mountains of information into an easily-accessible fingertip database.
It may seem silly to some to gush over index cards, but these things are really, really nifty. I've got organized, accessible, physical copies of my notes, and I can flip through everything without ever having to tab out of my main manuscript file.
I may have converted Mires to the ways of the plotter, but she's accidentally converted me to the cult of the card.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more giant index cards to shuffle around on my plot board.
'Til next time,
J.
Index cards. A common tool of the writer. Some people use them for jotting notes, some people use them for organizing scenes. Some use them for the basic stuff, some find them vital to their craft. Some don't use them at all, and until yesterday I counted myself among that crowd.
The lovely Mireyah Wolfe and I have been talking a lot about plotting lately. I'm a lifelong plotter, while she's never had a lot of experience with sitting down and planning out where her story is going to go. I suggested a few of my preferred techniques and recommended a book or two, and the next time I went over to her place to hang out, her dining room wall was plastered with ginormous index cards covered with notes. I admit, it made me smile to have made a convert to the world of plot, but I digress. It was those index cards that caught my eye. They were big enough to fit plenty of information, but small enough that they could be easily organized and moved around. In short, they were exactly what I'd been looking for over the past several weeks, and I was determined to get my hands on some.
Mires told me where to get some giant index cards of my very own, and so we made the trek to the local drugstore. Five bucks later, I had two packs of my very own, and I've since started to take down character profile notes and brief chapter outlines. I've never used index cards before now, but I'm finding more and more that they're a cheap, convenient way to organize mountains of information into an easily-accessible fingertip database.
It may seem silly to some to gush over index cards, but these things are really, really nifty. I've got organized, accessible, physical copies of my notes, and I can flip through everything without ever having to tab out of my main manuscript file.
I may have converted Mires to the ways of the plotter, but she's accidentally converted me to the cult of the card.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more giant index cards to shuffle around on my plot board.
'Til next time,
J.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Too Much, Not Enough
When it comes to missing a day of writing, I used to say, "well, I just didn't have the time." These days, that's very much not the problem. If anything, I have entirely too much time on my hands.
I stay at home while my husband works two jobs, and I don't currently have a vehicle. That's not a "poor me," or anything; it's the way things are, and it works for us. The point is that, aside from our pets, I'm at home alone, with nowhere to go, and that it's a daily thing. I have housework to take care of, but that really doesn't take too much time. The rest of the day is completely mine.
Sounds great, right?
For the most part, yeah, it is pretty awesome. I can walk away from most projects when I start to get overwhelmed or bored or I just feel like doing something else for a little while. The problem is that I have no daily structure, and it's easy to either get extremely bored very quickly, or get sucked into something and not walk away from it until it's 5:30 and time for dinner. Either way, it becomes extremely difficult to focus on the one thing I'm trying to get back into:
Writing.
Lack of structure and an excess of free time makes it so endlessly difficult to muster the self-discipline to write daily. When I can spend literally all day long playing video games and have pretty much no negative repercussions from that act, it's easy to do just that. When I get bored and nothing is stopping me from just going to take a nap, it's really really easy to do just that. The hard thing is putting my butt in the chair, switching on my brain, and doing something that can be difficult, frustrating, and, when it comes to editing, occasionally tedious.
Today I'm letting myself bask in laziness and lack of structure, because I have at least acknowledged the problem. I'm going to get it all out of my system. Tomorrow, however, starts the days of a specific time frame in which I will write. Saying "I'll write [x] amount a day" hasn't cut it, because that [x] amount gets lost in all the free time. Saying "I'll write from noon to one every day" has a lot less wiggle room.
Self-discipline is hard, but I think I can do this.
'Til next time,
J.
I stay at home while my husband works two jobs, and I don't currently have a vehicle. That's not a "poor me," or anything; it's the way things are, and it works for us. The point is that, aside from our pets, I'm at home alone, with nowhere to go, and that it's a daily thing. I have housework to take care of, but that really doesn't take too much time. The rest of the day is completely mine.
Sounds great, right?
For the most part, yeah, it is pretty awesome. I can walk away from most projects when I start to get overwhelmed or bored or I just feel like doing something else for a little while. The problem is that I have no daily structure, and it's easy to either get extremely bored very quickly, or get sucked into something and not walk away from it until it's 5:30 and time for dinner. Either way, it becomes extremely difficult to focus on the one thing I'm trying to get back into:
Writing.
Lack of structure and an excess of free time makes it so endlessly difficult to muster the self-discipline to write daily. When I can spend literally all day long playing video games and have pretty much no negative repercussions from that act, it's easy to do just that. When I get bored and nothing is stopping me from just going to take a nap, it's really really easy to do just that. The hard thing is putting my butt in the chair, switching on my brain, and doing something that can be difficult, frustrating, and, when it comes to editing, occasionally tedious.
Today I'm letting myself bask in laziness and lack of structure, because I have at least acknowledged the problem. I'm going to get it all out of my system. Tomorrow, however, starts the days of a specific time frame in which I will write. Saying "I'll write [x] amount a day" hasn't cut it, because that [x] amount gets lost in all the free time. Saying "I'll write from noon to one every day" has a lot less wiggle room.
Self-discipline is hard, but I think I can do this.
'Til next time,
J.
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