Happy weekend Grinders, how are the preparations for National Novel Writing Month going? Share your progress or your worst fears in the comments below.
All of us, at some point, will experience some fear and anxiety when we look at the goal of writing 50K words in 30 days. Today I am going to share with you a secret that will save you from yourself, and the fear of quitting before you finish. The answer? Go to a kick-off meeting and/or a write in.
To answer your next question, a write-in is a group setting where multiple NaNoers go to write. They are mostly commonly at a restaurant, library, coffeehouse, or lobby somewhere sympathetic to trying to write a novel in a month. Groups, usually a small handful to more than 100s can go to these organized events where you will sit and write for an extended period of time.
Some of the most common advantages are having word wars where everyone will try to write more words than anyone else, or just your neighbor on that comfy chair, in a predetermined amount of time. For example it may be a word sprint of trying to get 2K words done in an hour. It is amazing how a communal cause can motivate the masses to write their tails off.
Many of these events have food, give aways, and the best benefit is your ability to network with similarly minded people. Some of the best relationships can be forged over a a common cause, even if that cause is one you have to do alone. Spotter buddy anyone?
Most regions have dozens and dozens of write ins and you can find them on the nanowrimo.org site, simply go to the forums and join the forum for your region and find the write ins. They will have times, locations, rules, expectations etc posted on the forum post.
The best write-in of all is the kick-off party. For example this year's kick off party for my region is being hosted at a hotel by two local writers. The turn out in previous years has been several dozen people where most of them bring home cooked food for a potluck. There are some gift bags, give aways and the promise for networking opportunities.
I highly recommend going to the website now, nanowrimo.org, and finding your local kick-off party. Most of them are on the evening of Halloween (most encourage costumes and even have contests). You will have to do some planning to juggle trick-or-treat missions with your quest of writing a novel, but hey sugar never hurt a writer, at least not much.
I will going to my region's kick-off party. My challenge to you is to do the same, just make sure you bring your writing supplies for the midnight kick off of writing your book.
Get your grind on.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Sunday, October 19, 2014
What does editing actually look like?
Hey Grinders. I wanted to share something with you that I don't see enough of in the writing world and it looks like this:
I'm sure you recognize it and it's probably from your dreaded days in high school or college. The reason I post this is because as writers we are at a huge learning disadvantage when we work. We only see the most polished work of our favorite authors and almost never do we see the first version. I wish writers would share more first drafts and more edited copies to help us learn.
My edits aren't perfect and I am no great writer or editor but I am a writer and editor who is willing to take the risk and post a work in progress.
This exercise may help you and it might not but it's important to remind ourselves that we need to edit before we can share our work. It's one thing to wing a Twitter update or rush through a blog post but your primary writing should have the first round of polish done by the author.
It will help friends who read your work and it will helps editors who look at your work to not waste time fixing simple errors you can find for them. In turn it will save you money and time when you publish.
I also want to say that this edit you see is four of the twenty one pages of the story that I had edited before and I still found errors. No one writes a perfect first draft and if they say they do I promise they're lying.
My challenge for you is to take a piece you wrote recently but haven't looked at in atleast a few weeks and run through it and see what you come up with. Let me know how it goes.
Please know that grinding your words means to take time to edit too. You will get better from doing it.
Keep up the grind.
Who is your writing support system?
Happy Sunday Grinders. How did your exercise editing some older work go? Find any insights? What was most important to you? Tell me about it in the comments.
With just over two weeks left before NaNo begins I thought it was the perfect chance to talk about our writing support system and why it is important. While some writers live the single hermit lifestyle and can set whatever schedule they want, which sounds nice to the majority of us who struggle to carve out writing time between jobs, spouses, kids, natural disasters and a sleep schedule, I will tell you why you need a writing support system and how you can build it if you have never had it before.
NaNo can be an especially challenging time for writers who battle the time challenges of family, work and friends. Trying to write 50K words in a month is going to mean for 99% of us mortals something we don't want to hear or have a hard time dealing with: SACRIFICE. But I am not talking about sacrifice that you will have to make, you already have a good idea what that is, for many it will mean less sleep, falling behind on your book reading schedule, ordering in or fast food instead of cooking, or maybe just going hungry. I am sorry to say that those are the easy sacrifices that will be made in November.
The truly difficult sacrifices that will be made to support your novel writing won't be done by you. They are the sacrifices that those around you will make. The time you won't spend with your best friend, the dinners at the table as a family(yes those still exist for some), the long talks on the phone that your long distance family rely on to keep in touch, and don't forget the holidays it will be the month of Turkey Day after all. And if your family is anything like mine there isn't just a turkey on the fourth Thursday, it is about six Thanksgivings, eight birthdays, two new children being born and a list of a dozen family traditions that can't be missed. Okay, now what does this all mean?
It means that it is time to recognize and thank the people who will go without for 30 days, and it is always better to do it now, it really helps your family not resent your dedication to your craft. I have a great support system myself, better than I deserve, I have a wife, parents, grand parents, siblings and friends who support and encourage my writing. I am blessed.
Make sure you take sometime to help do some extra laundry, dishes, organize a bookshelf, vacuum the carpet, take the car for a wash. Or better yet, take your kids to somewhere fun, your spouse on a date, and make an extra phone call this week to family. It is hard enough to find people to support you, don't you think that you should do a little extra when it counts the most to show them thank you? Start with your most important supporter and go from there.
For me it is my wife. She is beyond encouraging, supportive and helpful in my pursuit to make writing my career and my life's mission. She takes care of the kids while I write. She makes sure that someone cleans the house, pays the bills, makes the phone calls and keeps track of all of the birthdays. And she doesn't just do it for the 30 days of NaNoWriMo. She does it everyday and has for months and years now. I don't always say thank you, not because I am not grateful, but because it is hard to not feel the deepest guilt over banging the keys when I could be cooking dinner, doing chores or running errands with my wife and two kids. Writing is the hardest thing I have ever dedicated myself to. And it is impossibly more difficult when you have a family like mine that you never have enough time with. But to have a partner in life that understands the importance of what you are doing, and knows that there will be a long term benefit, and knows that maybe there won't be. But they do it for you out of love and friendship is truly amazing.
My challenge for you this time is to tell the person who is your biggest supporter how much you appreciate them. Do something nice for them, buy them a gift, help around the house, or simply sit down and have a meal with them, or just coffee. Let them know that they make all of the difference.
At the end of the day we cannot do this alone because we are all functioning writeaholics, and while for some that lasts only 30 days, I hope for you it lasts a whole lot longer, it has for me, and it couldn't without my family, I love you, and to my wife, you are my rock, my sunshine and my muse.
With just over two weeks left before NaNo begins I thought it was the perfect chance to talk about our writing support system and why it is important. While some writers live the single hermit lifestyle and can set whatever schedule they want, which sounds nice to the majority of us who struggle to carve out writing time between jobs, spouses, kids, natural disasters and a sleep schedule, I will tell you why you need a writing support system and how you can build it if you have never had it before.
NaNo can be an especially challenging time for writers who battle the time challenges of family, work and friends. Trying to write 50K words in a month is going to mean for 99% of us mortals something we don't want to hear or have a hard time dealing with: SACRIFICE. But I am not talking about sacrifice that you will have to make, you already have a good idea what that is, for many it will mean less sleep, falling behind on your book reading schedule, ordering in or fast food instead of cooking, or maybe just going hungry. I am sorry to say that those are the easy sacrifices that will be made in November.
The truly difficult sacrifices that will be made to support your novel writing won't be done by you. They are the sacrifices that those around you will make. The time you won't spend with your best friend, the dinners at the table as a family(yes those still exist for some), the long talks on the phone that your long distance family rely on to keep in touch, and don't forget the holidays it will be the month of Turkey Day after all. And if your family is anything like mine there isn't just a turkey on the fourth Thursday, it is about six Thanksgivings, eight birthdays, two new children being born and a list of a dozen family traditions that can't be missed. Okay, now what does this all mean?
It means that it is time to recognize and thank the people who will go without for 30 days, and it is always better to do it now, it really helps your family not resent your dedication to your craft. I have a great support system myself, better than I deserve, I have a wife, parents, grand parents, siblings and friends who support and encourage my writing. I am blessed.
Make sure you take sometime to help do some extra laundry, dishes, organize a bookshelf, vacuum the carpet, take the car for a wash. Or better yet, take your kids to somewhere fun, your spouse on a date, and make an extra phone call this week to family. It is hard enough to find people to support you, don't you think that you should do a little extra when it counts the most to show them thank you? Start with your most important supporter and go from there.
For me it is my wife. She is beyond encouraging, supportive and helpful in my pursuit to make writing my career and my life's mission. She takes care of the kids while I write. She makes sure that someone cleans the house, pays the bills, makes the phone calls and keeps track of all of the birthdays. And she doesn't just do it for the 30 days of NaNoWriMo. She does it everyday and has for months and years now. I don't always say thank you, not because I am not grateful, but because it is hard to not feel the deepest guilt over banging the keys when I could be cooking dinner, doing chores or running errands with my wife and two kids. Writing is the hardest thing I have ever dedicated myself to. And it is impossibly more difficult when you have a family like mine that you never have enough time with. But to have a partner in life that understands the importance of what you are doing, and knows that there will be a long term benefit, and knows that maybe there won't be. But they do it for you out of love and friendship is truly amazing.
My challenge for you this time is to tell the person who is your biggest supporter how much you appreciate them. Do something nice for them, buy them a gift, help around the house, or simply sit down and have a meal with them, or just coffee. Let them know that they make all of the difference.
At the end of the day we cannot do this alone because we are all functioning writeaholics, and while for some that lasts only 30 days, I hope for you it lasts a whole lot longer, it has for me, and it couldn't without my family, I love you, and to my wife, you are my rock, my sunshine and my muse.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
What is your writing Mission Statement? And why it's the most important page you will ever write...
Good afternoon Grinders. How did your exercise of making a simple outline and timing your writing efforts go? Did the outline help? If so how much faster did you write? Share it in the comments.
Today I am going to help you learn what a writing "Mission Statement"(M.S.) is and why it can be the difference maker when it comes to your success or failure as a writer and a creative in general. Most people would equate the term M.S. with a business or company, because most of them have them. I think we can all agree that many, if not most, companies fail to follow their statement which in turn can only hurt them. So how can a person, especially a writer and creative have a stuffy sounding "Statement" to help guide them to creative and publishing success?
It all comes back to setting your sights on your goal, most of us know in an instant what that means to us and what we want, but rarely do we take the time to write them down. I think it comes from a natural mixture of being embarrassed and reluctant to put that much importance on something we actually want, especially something creative. We are often hardwired from the day we are born to think that being creative is a waste of time and energy, and we need to do real work. The other reason I believe comes from a mixture of fear of failure. Meaning that if we just chose not to write down our core goals then we cannot be held accountable to them, especially accountable to ourselves. It's time to stop the shenanigans and put our M.S. on paper.
Here is the challenge for you. Get out a piece of paper and write your M.S.. It doesn't have to be long, complicated, and certainly doesn't need big words. But it must be honest and it needs to have some detail to it. You can include whatever elements you want, but I would highly encourage you to ensure that you are including some type of deadline or timeline depending on how specific you are on your M.S.. Avoid making it too broad brush and writing something like "I want to write a novel". And remember you can always change it, add to it or remove a piece that you complete or that may not fit anymore. If you are having a hard time coming up with it, then I suggest focusing your M.S. on your plan for the next 90 days.
Here is my rough M.S. for the next 90 days.
I will spend the four weeks of October plotting/outlining my NaNo project and spending at least three days a week adding content to my new blog in support of NaNoWriMo. I will write 100,000 words on my novel in the month of November for NaNoWriMo, and I will post at least twice a week to the blog to help encourage my readers support their challenges and give them a place to speak their minds on their own projects. I will post blurbs of my project on the blog to help treat my readers and help hold myself accountable to creating more content. I will allow myself the first week of December off from the novel and finish reading my book on editing a manuscript by Don McNair. On December 8th I will pick up my novel and begin to make my first read through and structural edit. I will have this finished by New Year of 2015. I will then send my manuscript to no less than 6 beta readers. I will ask them if they can give me feedback by January 21st and which point I will spend 2 weeks reviewing their notes and comments. I will spend the first two weeks of February tweaking my draft. I will give it one final read through making final changes and then I will send it to an editor for a full shred edit. I will spend the rest of March after I receive the manuscript back making my final edits. On April 1st I will work on finalizing my formatting for the finished project and on April 6th (which so happens to be my birthday) I will independently publish my novel on Amazon, Kobo, B&N and all other desired platforms. I will spend April and May promoting my book. Then it's time to write another.
I know this M.S. is probably longer and more detailed than you had in mind. But I will challenge you to come up with something similar. I believe this is a particularly good time to write such a plan with NaNo on the horizon. After you finish writing/typing your statement, take a copy and hang it next your desk, refrigerator, front door or in your car. Whatever works best for you. And let it be a constant reminder to you that you have made a commitment to yourself and your creative project.
Most importantly know that after this exercise, you are one step closer than you were before in accomplishing your dreams and your creative goals.
Thanks for reading, let me know how this goes and if you feel like sharing your M.S. great! Post it in the comments. Until then it is time for us all to get back to the grind.
Today I am going to help you learn what a writing "Mission Statement"(M.S.) is and why it can be the difference maker when it comes to your success or failure as a writer and a creative in general. Most people would equate the term M.S. with a business or company, because most of them have them. I think we can all agree that many, if not most, companies fail to follow their statement which in turn can only hurt them. So how can a person, especially a writer and creative have a stuffy sounding "Statement" to help guide them to creative and publishing success?
It all comes back to setting your sights on your goal, most of us know in an instant what that means to us and what we want, but rarely do we take the time to write them down. I think it comes from a natural mixture of being embarrassed and reluctant to put that much importance on something we actually want, especially something creative. We are often hardwired from the day we are born to think that being creative is a waste of time and energy, and we need to do real work. The other reason I believe comes from a mixture of fear of failure. Meaning that if we just chose not to write down our core goals then we cannot be held accountable to them, especially accountable to ourselves. It's time to stop the shenanigans and put our M.S. on paper.
Here is the challenge for you. Get out a piece of paper and write your M.S.. It doesn't have to be long, complicated, and certainly doesn't need big words. But it must be honest and it needs to have some detail to it. You can include whatever elements you want, but I would highly encourage you to ensure that you are including some type of deadline or timeline depending on how specific you are on your M.S.. Avoid making it too broad brush and writing something like "I want to write a novel". And remember you can always change it, add to it or remove a piece that you complete or that may not fit anymore. If you are having a hard time coming up with it, then I suggest focusing your M.S. on your plan for the next 90 days.
Here is my rough M.S. for the next 90 days.
I will spend the four weeks of October plotting/outlining my NaNo project and spending at least three days a week adding content to my new blog in support of NaNoWriMo. I will write 100,000 words on my novel in the month of November for NaNoWriMo, and I will post at least twice a week to the blog to help encourage my readers support their challenges and give them a place to speak their minds on their own projects. I will post blurbs of my project on the blog to help treat my readers and help hold myself accountable to creating more content. I will allow myself the first week of December off from the novel and finish reading my book on editing a manuscript by Don McNair. On December 8th I will pick up my novel and begin to make my first read through and structural edit. I will have this finished by New Year of 2015. I will then send my manuscript to no less than 6 beta readers. I will ask them if they can give me feedback by January 21st and which point I will spend 2 weeks reviewing their notes and comments. I will spend the first two weeks of February tweaking my draft. I will give it one final read through making final changes and then I will send it to an editor for a full shred edit. I will spend the rest of March after I receive the manuscript back making my final edits. On April 1st I will work on finalizing my formatting for the finished project and on April 6th (which so happens to be my birthday) I will independently publish my novel on Amazon, Kobo, B&N and all other desired platforms. I will spend April and May promoting my book. Then it's time to write another.
I know this M.S. is probably longer and more detailed than you had in mind. But I will challenge you to come up with something similar. I believe this is a particularly good time to write such a plan with NaNo on the horizon. After you finish writing/typing your statement, take a copy and hang it next your desk, refrigerator, front door or in your car. Whatever works best for you. And let it be a constant reminder to you that you have made a commitment to yourself and your creative project.
Most importantly know that after this exercise, you are one step closer than you were before in accomplishing your dreams and your creative goals.
Thanks for reading, let me know how this goes and if you feel like sharing your M.S. great! Post it in the comments. Until then it is time for us all to get back to the grind.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Building an Outline: A short guide to writing faster with bullet points
Welcome back Grinders. How did your exercise on writing goals versus your writing ambitions help you? Did you find a way to become more specific with your goals and to clarify your ultimate ambition?
It has been a couple of posts since I have reminded everyone that NaNoWriMo is three weeks away. If you haven't taken advantage of this break before the fury of writing, then I strongly urge you to spend some time prepping your novel. It will save you hours and headaches later when it really counts and your 50K word goal is on the line. Today I am going to show you how a basic outline can be the difference maker in the middle of your project.
Many authors I talk to are strict about not outlining their stories, we've talked about it in a previous post, but it is worth bringing up again. I think this is especially important for people who are setting out to write their first novel. I can make all of the difference when you are trying to blaze through words between work and dinner, and dinner and bed. You will find it harder then you think to find time to write so it will be up to you to make the most if it. If you could why not just write faster?
The idea I want to introduce has many names, and some different approaches, but it is one of the best outlining systems I have found yet. I have heard it called: plot points, story beats, story bullets, headlines, summaries etc. Whatever name you have heard it called it remains a valuable tool to dramatically increasing your writing.
I want you to take out a piece of paper or open up a blank word document and start thinking about a scene, chapter or short story that you are thinking about writing. Now you are going to take that scene and make a list of bullet points or story beats that will give you a rough guide of your goals to writing this story. I am going to take an earlier version of my upcoming NaNo'14 story beats and show you my approach. It is a sci-fi novel set initially about 40 years from now where we meet a woman named Cora who is training in a program, the training regimen is brutal and she doesn't know what the goal of the program is. In the initial scene I have a lot I need to accomplish. I need to: create a story hook, introduce the MC Cora, give the reader detail that this story in the future, create some sense of action and suspense, and lead into the next chapter.
Please keep in mind a few keys to this abridged form of outlining: you can always change it, it doesn't need to be in an kind of real order, and it can be a few words to several paragraphs for each beat if that is what works for you. One of the best things about this approach is that you can tweak it to suit your needs, timeline, and your writing style. On to the example.
-Meet Cora Preston (refer to character sheet) she is in a training facility with a dozen or so other people who are in the training program.
-Meet Jonathan Braddock (character sheet) who is the instructor of this group of trainees. He is a tough retired army colonel who immediately gets the action going.
-He chooses Tabias Engle (no character sheet) and Cora Preston to spar in the middle of the room in front of the group of trainees.
-Cora and Tabias have a fierce bout with each other, Cora is out matched in size and strength and has to find a creative and deceptive way to win the fight and avoid getting injured. This will show some of her character traits: toughness, resourcefulness, determination.
-After Cora pulls off an upset much to everyone's surprise. Braddock then challenges Cora himself and quickly thrashes her. In a moment where she thinks she may win even though she is on the ground, she kicks to try and trip Braddock who thinks he has made his point, she breaks her tibia on his leg not knowing that it is a bionic leg. Establishes the sci-fi element.
-Cora is in a great deal of pain and is taken to the infirmary for treatment. Where we will later meet her mother Helen.
-Braddock dismisses the class and leaves the training floor and speaks with Elliot Kimco (character sheet), where Kimco asks Braddock what he thinks of the recruits and their potential. Braddock says that he is the most impressed by Cora but Kimco is unconvinced after the most recent display.
-Kimco reinforces the hook that only 4 of the final 12 participants will move on after this week, a group that had once been 100s of trainees. He then tells Braddock that this group is too important to fail and that Braddock had better find the right group. Use this conversation to detail the wider scope of the story arc.
In my example I have spent time writing 8 bullet points of information, of varying length and detail, which will help me in writing my scene. This took less than 10 minutes worth of time, which may seem like a great deal of time spent not adding to your word count, but I guarantee it will save you time in writing the scene. This will help keep you focused on your goal of the scene, you will be less likely to forget introducing an important piece to the reader that will be needed in a later scene, and it will help keep you laser focused on getting the story moving and you will be less likely to get off topic and write yourself into a corner that will only cost you more time getting out of.
In the end it may save you 3 or 4 times the amount of time it took to write when you come to the editing in December and beyond. If you remember to save the story beats and attach them to the chapter as your write, it will be easy for you to use them later as a reference guide.
The challenge today Grinders is to see how much this benefits you. Try writing a scene without using the above outlining technique. It doesn't need to be long a few hundred to a couple thousand. And then write a different scene and start by coming up with 3 or 12 story beats, or more if needed, and then write the scene. Make sure you time both of these exercises just like I suggested in a previous post on gauging your writing efficiency.
Post your results in the comments for everyone to read. Did you find that the outline helped you speed up? Or did the extra time you spent detailing the outline have the opposite effect?
Let's get back to the grind.
It has been a couple of posts since I have reminded everyone that NaNoWriMo is three weeks away. If you haven't taken advantage of this break before the fury of writing, then I strongly urge you to spend some time prepping your novel. It will save you hours and headaches later when it really counts and your 50K word goal is on the line. Today I am going to show you how a basic outline can be the difference maker in the middle of your project.
Many authors I talk to are strict about not outlining their stories, we've talked about it in a previous post, but it is worth bringing up again. I think this is especially important for people who are setting out to write their first novel. I can make all of the difference when you are trying to blaze through words between work and dinner, and dinner and bed. You will find it harder then you think to find time to write so it will be up to you to make the most if it. If you could why not just write faster?
The idea I want to introduce has many names, and some different approaches, but it is one of the best outlining systems I have found yet. I have heard it called: plot points, story beats, story bullets, headlines, summaries etc. Whatever name you have heard it called it remains a valuable tool to dramatically increasing your writing.
I want you to take out a piece of paper or open up a blank word document and start thinking about a scene, chapter or short story that you are thinking about writing. Now you are going to take that scene and make a list of bullet points or story beats that will give you a rough guide of your goals to writing this story. I am going to take an earlier version of my upcoming NaNo'14 story beats and show you my approach. It is a sci-fi novel set initially about 40 years from now where we meet a woman named Cora who is training in a program, the training regimen is brutal and she doesn't know what the goal of the program is. In the initial scene I have a lot I need to accomplish. I need to: create a story hook, introduce the MC Cora, give the reader detail that this story in the future, create some sense of action and suspense, and lead into the next chapter.
Please keep in mind a few keys to this abridged form of outlining: you can always change it, it doesn't need to be in an kind of real order, and it can be a few words to several paragraphs for each beat if that is what works for you. One of the best things about this approach is that you can tweak it to suit your needs, timeline, and your writing style. On to the example.
-Meet Cora Preston (refer to character sheet) she is in a training facility with a dozen or so other people who are in the training program.
-Meet Jonathan Braddock (character sheet) who is the instructor of this group of trainees. He is a tough retired army colonel who immediately gets the action going.
-He chooses Tabias Engle (no character sheet) and Cora Preston to spar in the middle of the room in front of the group of trainees.
-Cora and Tabias have a fierce bout with each other, Cora is out matched in size and strength and has to find a creative and deceptive way to win the fight and avoid getting injured. This will show some of her character traits: toughness, resourcefulness, determination.
-After Cora pulls off an upset much to everyone's surprise. Braddock then challenges Cora himself and quickly thrashes her. In a moment where she thinks she may win even though she is on the ground, she kicks to try and trip Braddock who thinks he has made his point, she breaks her tibia on his leg not knowing that it is a bionic leg. Establishes the sci-fi element.
-Cora is in a great deal of pain and is taken to the infirmary for treatment. Where we will later meet her mother Helen.
-Braddock dismisses the class and leaves the training floor and speaks with Elliot Kimco (character sheet), where Kimco asks Braddock what he thinks of the recruits and their potential. Braddock says that he is the most impressed by Cora but Kimco is unconvinced after the most recent display.
-Kimco reinforces the hook that only 4 of the final 12 participants will move on after this week, a group that had once been 100s of trainees. He then tells Braddock that this group is too important to fail and that Braddock had better find the right group. Use this conversation to detail the wider scope of the story arc.
In my example I have spent time writing 8 bullet points of information, of varying length and detail, which will help me in writing my scene. This took less than 10 minutes worth of time, which may seem like a great deal of time spent not adding to your word count, but I guarantee it will save you time in writing the scene. This will help keep you focused on your goal of the scene, you will be less likely to forget introducing an important piece to the reader that will be needed in a later scene, and it will help keep you laser focused on getting the story moving and you will be less likely to get off topic and write yourself into a corner that will only cost you more time getting out of.
In the end it may save you 3 or 4 times the amount of time it took to write when you come to the editing in December and beyond. If you remember to save the story beats and attach them to the chapter as your write, it will be easy for you to use them later as a reference guide.
The challenge today Grinders is to see how much this benefits you. Try writing a scene without using the above outlining technique. It doesn't need to be long a few hundred to a couple thousand. And then write a different scene and start by coming up with 3 or 12 story beats, or more if needed, and then write the scene. Make sure you time both of these exercises just like I suggested in a previous post on gauging your writing efficiency.
Post your results in the comments for everyone to read. Did you find that the outline helped you speed up? Or did the extra time you spent detailing the outline have the opposite effect?
Let's get back to the grind.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Are you setting writing goals? Or just getting lost in the mist of ambition?
Good evening Grinders, how did your exercise of creating a name list go? Did you find some interesting name combinations? What was the biggest surprise of the exercise? Share in the comments and let me know. Now let's talk about a topic every writer can relate to.
What is your writing goal? It is a question I frequently ask writers who are just starting out, maybe they are just thinking about starting, and I will ask it of people who have been writing for a while, and the more people I ask, the more I realize most people have the same goals, yet they go unfulfilled but why?
First let's look at what the common answers are, and know that if your answer falls in line with some of my examples, don't think that your writing goal is bad. I simply want to show you a way to get what you want, instead of you beating your head against the writing wall. I most often hear: I want to write a book. Good ambition but it is a supremely lousy goal. Some say: I want to write a good book. Again a bigger ambition than just writing a book, but again an awful goal. I hear: I want to be a best selling author. Amazing ambition, horrendous goal. Are you scratching your head yet? Read on.
My personal ambition is to be a best selling author who is afforded the ability to make a living from his writing, while teaching writers to improve their own craft and reach their goals. My personal goal is to put my ass in the chair, today, and to not get up until I write at least 1,000 words. I know this sounds like an easy distinction once you hear it, but that is the whole point. I hear maybe 1 in a 100 writers who answers the question say anything about a word goal, or even settling on writing a single chapter or even tweaking their outline. All I manage to hear is something about writing a book or series. Do you know how many of them I have talked to who actually get there? So few that it isn't worth wasting a decimal point on the statistic.
But on the flip side, the writers I hear who say: my goal is to sit down and spend an hour writing or say I am going to squeeze sometime going over what I wrote yesterday. Those writers are the ones I see most commonly accomplishing their goals. Taking small, attainable steps is the absolute key to getting things done and making it to where you want to be. You can't sit down in an afternoon and write a book, you just can't. But you can decide to sit down today and put 250 words on a page and try and make them the best 250 words you have today.
Here is my challenge to you today. Take some time and really think about what your writing ambition is? Is it publishing your memoir? Write a comedy book? Write a book on history? Write it down. Then spend some time thinking about what your writing goal is. Is it writing 250 words? Editing 3 pages? Detailing a character outline for 30 minutes? Again be sure to write it down.
Making sure that you separate your writing goal and your writing ambition is the first step of aligning your goals to make your ambitions not only attainable but make them the reality you have always wanted.
Make sure you take some time and share what you found after this exercise and post it in the comments.
Now try to put two days of writing together in a row, you'd better get after it Grinder.
What is your writing goal? It is a question I frequently ask writers who are just starting out, maybe they are just thinking about starting, and I will ask it of people who have been writing for a while, and the more people I ask, the more I realize most people have the same goals, yet they go unfulfilled but why?
First let's look at what the common answers are, and know that if your answer falls in line with some of my examples, don't think that your writing goal is bad. I simply want to show you a way to get what you want, instead of you beating your head against the writing wall. I most often hear: I want to write a book. Good ambition but it is a supremely lousy goal. Some say: I want to write a good book. Again a bigger ambition than just writing a book, but again an awful goal. I hear: I want to be a best selling author. Amazing ambition, horrendous goal. Are you scratching your head yet? Read on.
My personal ambition is to be a best selling author who is afforded the ability to make a living from his writing, while teaching writers to improve their own craft and reach their goals. My personal goal is to put my ass in the chair, today, and to not get up until I write at least 1,000 words. I know this sounds like an easy distinction once you hear it, but that is the whole point. I hear maybe 1 in a 100 writers who answers the question say anything about a word goal, or even settling on writing a single chapter or even tweaking their outline. All I manage to hear is something about writing a book or series. Do you know how many of them I have talked to who actually get there? So few that it isn't worth wasting a decimal point on the statistic.
But on the flip side, the writers I hear who say: my goal is to sit down and spend an hour writing or say I am going to squeeze sometime going over what I wrote yesterday. Those writers are the ones I see most commonly accomplishing their goals. Taking small, attainable steps is the absolute key to getting things done and making it to where you want to be. You can't sit down in an afternoon and write a book, you just can't. But you can decide to sit down today and put 250 words on a page and try and make them the best 250 words you have today.
Here is my challenge to you today. Take some time and really think about what your writing ambition is? Is it publishing your memoir? Write a comedy book? Write a book on history? Write it down. Then spend some time thinking about what your writing goal is. Is it writing 250 words? Editing 3 pages? Detailing a character outline for 30 minutes? Again be sure to write it down.
Making sure that you separate your writing goal and your writing ambition is the first step of aligning your goals to make your ambitions not only attainable but make them the reality you have always wanted.
Make sure you take some time and share what you found after this exercise and post it in the comments.
Now try to put two days of writing together in a row, you'd better get after it Grinder.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
How to avoid one of the most common speed bumps to writing faster
First I want to say "thank you Grinders", for showing your support and helping this blog hit an early milestone of being comfortably into the four figures of total views. It is humbling to have so many people taking time out of their busy day and read what I have to say. I really hope it is helping get you thinking about writing, helping you prepare for NaNo, but most of all I hope it keeps you focused on your writing goals. Your support and comments help me stay focused on mine. Thank you.
Today I am going to make this short, but powerful in how much this tip will help you. This tip is especially helpful for those of you who are wanting to write faster, especially you NaNoWriMo hopefuls. The best part is, this tip can help anyone writing in any form of fiction. Have I built this up enough yet? Good.
I call it building a name list. Yes it is just that simple, but I don't know of many people who do it. I thought it was so simple, so silly, that I didn't do it forever and I kept on banging my head against the same road block. I realized that over the course of a novel or long writing project it would cost me minutes that over the course of 60 or 70 thousand words probably cost me hours. It happens to us all when we stop to name a character.
We all do it, though we do it different ways. I am half OCD and half touchy-feely so when I name a character I want it to sound equal parts: cool, classy, significant, have a deeper meaning, and be something unique. For example, if I see the name Gideon one more time I might freak. It is one thing to name your character John, sure I know a lot of Johns, but I have never met one Gideon in the whole of my life, but I can think of a dozen books the name appears in. When I got to the point of naming a character, even a trivial character, and especially so when I named a main character. I would stop my writing dead cold in the scene and grab my stack of name books, break out Google, and search the dark corners of my mind for just the perfect name.
I hated the whole process. I hated the time it took. And most of all I can think of so many times I would stop the project for the day because the prefect name didn't materialize, which cost me countless hours of writing productivity. I knew I had to stop this black hole of wasting my writing time. And eventually I came up with the easiest solution. Instead of coming up with the character names during the writing of a scene, which for the longest time seemed ultimately logical, I decided to build a character list of first and last names, for both genders, and put them on a piece of paper BEFORE I began the project. And when I came to a scene where I needed to insert a name I would look to my list and find a good combo that seemed to fit and then I just inserted it and made a note on the paper to avoid using it again.
I quickly found that I could breeze through a scene and feel like I could build on that character without all of the baggage that researching a name had caused before. Over time I refined this technique, such as when I write sci-fi I find a list of character names that sound like they belong to another world. And if I am writing a thriller set in recent times I will tailor a different list. I can tell at a glance what kind of themes or patterns I have with my name choices. I can then avoid having too many characters who have the same letter starting their name, or have too many last names that have a similar cadence. This make it far easier for your reader to not get confused as you introduce new characters to your story.
One last thing, you don't have to waste your time getting a naming book or using a baby name website. For example the most recent book I wrote, which was a sci-fi story set 200 years in the future, I knew I needed a list of about 30 characters and I got about 26 of those first and last names from the current rosters of baseball and football teams. To be clear I didn't copy and paste their names, I would simply mix and match names and I came up with names like Miles Axford, Lana Drake, Layne Rayburn, Roland Sale. In fact the only character I didn't get either name from a roster was the main character Tabris Valen.
The challenge this time is to find a set of rosters for a favorite sport, or the names from the credit list at the end of a movie, or the first 20 names you find when you read a newspaper, copy them down, cut and paste the names and create a list of a dozen or so potential characters. Please don't forget to share some of your favorite discoveries in the comments.
I hope this tip helps you avoid the speed bumps that plagued my early writing. This tip can be the difference maker for those of your gearing up for NaNo in a couple of weeks.
Good luck, now get back to the grind.
Today I am going to make this short, but powerful in how much this tip will help you. This tip is especially helpful for those of you who are wanting to write faster, especially you NaNoWriMo hopefuls. The best part is, this tip can help anyone writing in any form of fiction. Have I built this up enough yet? Good.
I call it building a name list. Yes it is just that simple, but I don't know of many people who do it. I thought it was so simple, so silly, that I didn't do it forever and I kept on banging my head against the same road block. I realized that over the course of a novel or long writing project it would cost me minutes that over the course of 60 or 70 thousand words probably cost me hours. It happens to us all when we stop to name a character.
We all do it, though we do it different ways. I am half OCD and half touchy-feely so when I name a character I want it to sound equal parts: cool, classy, significant, have a deeper meaning, and be something unique. For example, if I see the name Gideon one more time I might freak. It is one thing to name your character John, sure I know a lot of Johns, but I have never met one Gideon in the whole of my life, but I can think of a dozen books the name appears in. When I got to the point of naming a character, even a trivial character, and especially so when I named a main character. I would stop my writing dead cold in the scene and grab my stack of name books, break out Google, and search the dark corners of my mind for just the perfect name.
I hated the whole process. I hated the time it took. And most of all I can think of so many times I would stop the project for the day because the prefect name didn't materialize, which cost me countless hours of writing productivity. I knew I had to stop this black hole of wasting my writing time. And eventually I came up with the easiest solution. Instead of coming up with the character names during the writing of a scene, which for the longest time seemed ultimately logical, I decided to build a character list of first and last names, for both genders, and put them on a piece of paper BEFORE I began the project. And when I came to a scene where I needed to insert a name I would look to my list and find a good combo that seemed to fit and then I just inserted it and made a note on the paper to avoid using it again.
I quickly found that I could breeze through a scene and feel like I could build on that character without all of the baggage that researching a name had caused before. Over time I refined this technique, such as when I write sci-fi I find a list of character names that sound like they belong to another world. And if I am writing a thriller set in recent times I will tailor a different list. I can tell at a glance what kind of themes or patterns I have with my name choices. I can then avoid having too many characters who have the same letter starting their name, or have too many last names that have a similar cadence. This make it far easier for your reader to not get confused as you introduce new characters to your story.
One last thing, you don't have to waste your time getting a naming book or using a baby name website. For example the most recent book I wrote, which was a sci-fi story set 200 years in the future, I knew I needed a list of about 30 characters and I got about 26 of those first and last names from the current rosters of baseball and football teams. To be clear I didn't copy and paste their names, I would simply mix and match names and I came up with names like Miles Axford, Lana Drake, Layne Rayburn, Roland Sale. In fact the only character I didn't get either name from a roster was the main character Tabris Valen.
The challenge this time is to find a set of rosters for a favorite sport, or the names from the credit list at the end of a movie, or the first 20 names you find when you read a newspaper, copy them down, cut and paste the names and create a list of a dozen or so potential characters. Please don't forget to share some of your favorite discoveries in the comments.
I hope this tip helps you avoid the speed bumps that plagued my early writing. This tip can be the difference maker for those of your gearing up for NaNo in a couple of weeks.
Good luck, now get back to the grind.
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