Category Archives: Using my Degree

Morning Pages

Posted on by
Reply

image

Since I have some extra time in the mornings and I really should do more writing not just editing the novel, I thought I’d get back into the habit of morning pages. Also this is an excuse to post here every day. I warn you, no sense may be had.

I needed a coffee cup for Job of Irony. This is a green company, which is fancy talk for more trashcans with no idea what goes in which and we’ll charge you for cups, flatware, plates and bowls. Supposedly this is also a healthly company, but I can’t use those benefits yet. Except the vending machines which say they only stock healthy snacks. However, the nutrional value of the Snickers and Twix stocked in them don’t really fall into the realm of a “healthy snack”.

So I used to have a nice tea travel mug but some how all the parts are gone making it useless. Since I already have a humungo Camel water bottle, I wanted something smaller. Travel chopsticks and Hello Kitty travel flatware aside, I wanted something pretty.

Speaking of which, those ceramic tea and coffee travel mugs look beautiful! But really, how long do those even last? How do you not break them or die from the wieght of carrying those around?

I found this nice mug at Starbucks. It is small, only 8 oz. The lid fits well, and doesn’t do anything wierd like spout or well the coffee that misses your mouth back into the cup. But the bonus is that it is decorated by a rainbow scratch paper that you scratch your self. So I put stars, dragons and a creepy bear fox thing that stares at you from the corner. That way no one will steal it. (Or that’s what I tell myself).

ooo! I got my old bluetooth keyboard to work with my phone. It’s handy for just writing, like I am now. Not so much for the editng but at least that’s still happing. I officially hate the words come, just and look. Sucky stupid line edits.

I’ve put Manali and Memorial pages away long enough that I better get to editing them so I can send them out. That won’t take nearly so long but I’m afraid that Manali may grow to 10,000 words. Then what?

Okay, time for Job of Irony.

I Finished a Novel

Posted on by
Reply

On Friday, I finished line edits on my novel and I set it out to be read one more time. I’m pretty confident it will be one more time. A person could come back and tell me it makes no sense at all or my characters all suck. That could happen, but I don’t think it will. Okay, I really hope it won’t.

So now, it’s synopsis and query writing time. And more active market research. Oh my.

Writers

Posted on by
Reply

Writers are not considered part of the larger ecosystem. Creativity and art are afforded little value in today’s corporate culture. It’s a lie, of course — writers are everywhere. Our work is ever-present yet our role remains unconsidered. The written word is a powerful support structure, and it’s everywhere you look. Magazines, billboards, instruction manuals, marketing copy, and, oh, I dunno, the entire Internet. Nearly everything begins with the written word, and yet, despite this significant contribution, writers and other creatives exist as a marginalized group. Further, our support system is eroding.

Just so.

Rereading Storm of Swords and Observations on Feast of Crows

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve reviewed Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin before on this blog. I still cried when Sansa made Winterfell; I still hated that the Starks kept missing each other; and I still cheered a bit for Tyrion and Jaime.

Then I finally picked up Feast of Crows. I have been putting off reading this one because I knew he was working on a fifth and now sixth book. If you read my blog then you know that if I have comments on a book I’m not finished with, there are issues.

Martin is missing something. Somewhere along the line, he decided that every minor character must have their say. He’s now giving full chapters to Head of Guards, The Priest, etc. These don’t further the story anymore than one sentence would. Instead of a couple of thousand words from the Head of the Guards, he could have said, “Dorne may go to war with the Lannisters” which he did say in Storm of Swords. Instead of a chapter from the priestly Greyjoy, he could have said, “Now with Balon dead, the ironmen are fighting over their next ruler.”

I’m staring at a 1000 pages of fluff. Stuff that the author knows that we really don’t need to know. Martin isn’t writing a story any more. He’s interviewing characters. We already know that Cersei is batshit crazy, being in her head doesn’t help matters. Martin isn’t answering questions but harping on what we already know from the last three books. I have yet to find any story forwarding material in Feast of Crows. I’m hesitant to say you can skip this book…but I am afraid that when it comes time to review the fourth Song of Ice and Fire book, that I’ll be able to say you can skip this and you’ll never know the difference.

Creating Religion

Posted on by
Reply

The current book I’m working on deals with the religion in the world I’ve built. Creating a religion for a fantasy is a doubled edged as uni-climate planets and universal languages. Most authors force the entire world to believe the same.

First, I settled on a one religion with many regional parts. There are countries who as a whole do not subscribe to the belief and others that take parts more serious than others. Some of this is regional and some governmental.

The first step is to ask what do these people worship and why. What do they provide? What does the infrastructure provide and why?

In a fantasy world, magic tends to interfere with religion. Whether it is part of the religion, despised by the religion or just separate comes into play. I choose to have the magic interweave with the religion, which poses its own set of problems.

How much is for the people? What isn’t for the people?

In this book, I’m using religion as a haven. The main character wants to part of it but her duties are keeping her from it. It’s about agreeing to lose something for the greater good and what drives you to that.

Every swear, ritual and myth that I work into the story goes into the file. I’m not sure it’s clear all the way through. What pertains to the story and what is relevant back-story is a puzzle that I’m trying to fit into the plot.

Belief is a tricky thing.

Waiting Behind the E-Reader Evolution

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t have an E-Reader.

Okay, we have iPads in the house, I have various ebook applications on my computer, but I’m not buying ebooks. I can’t bring myself to do it. I have various reasons. Ebooks are the furture…we’ve known this for a long time. However it’s time is not yet now.

Waiting for VHS

At some point all this silliness will cease and we will have a single ebook format. I don’t want to buy an ebook now and not be able to read it later because I choose my ebook format poorly. This is my primary motivation for avoiding e-readers. Lets just go through the paces which the music and movie industry still shutter through every few years.

Format, copying the format, sharing the format and finally realizing after DRM, congressional reviews, and random idiocy from pundits and industry whosits and finally the semi realization that sharing and copying mean more sales.

Yawn. This is so 1970.

I keep things. I have my own library. I have books that are so awesome and JUST DON’T Exist anymore. They aren’t going to be republished, they are not in the public domain and they are treasures. Until I can digitize these treasures I can’t not look back. I still have tapes because I can’t bear to part with them until I find a CD to digitize them, get one of those tape digitizing machines or finally find it to buy again on itunes. Same deal for VHS. Two drawers full until I can find these guys on dvd or blue ray. I have dvd cases of movies stolen by movers that I’m waiting to find again (Lion King hurry up and can anyone get me Last Unicorn again?).

These treasures do not deserve to be lost. Let me get this straight though. I OWN these copies and they are mine to do with as I will as long as I don’t make copies, charge money and just give it out to everyone. Digital makes no difference. I have to be able to share my books with friends and I have to be able to pick up a treasure ten years from now and enjoy it.

Otherwise it’s fleeting and forgotten. And no writer, especially me, wants that for any book.

CPGO – Step 6: Scene by Scene

Posted on by
Reply

We’re down to the meat, the scene by scene outline. The structure I use for this is inherent in yWriter, but let’s talk about scenes first.

A scene is a moment in the story defined by a time and place. BiaM and You Can Write a Novel both adhere to the ten scene model. That is, action packed movies and books have ten or less major scene. Neither of them are talking about fantasy. A lot of writers I know look at the ten scene theory and freak. However, this, like other things involved in novel writing, is only a suggestion. Me? I go through and lay out the scenes without counting them.

Exercise: Do the Scene Shuffle.
If you’re having trouble figuring out which scenes go where then this might help. Write out the descriptions of each scene you know is going to be in your novel on index cards or in a software package that allows you to reorder cards or scenes. yWriter does this but sometimes I like things a little free form. My current writing computer is a touch screen with Windows 7 installed. So I use Windows stickies on the cork board. This way I have card like in real life without needing the space of the cards. Most novel writing packages have this ability and a lot of people use mind mapping software to organize. Do whatever works for you.

After I know what order my scenes are in, I create the number of chapters in yWriter I think I need. This is based off the Setting Sketch step. Currently I think I need nine chapters. Then I go to chapter one. I ignore chapter descriptions until I’m finished with the last revision. Instead, I create a scene in chapter one. I open that, give it a date, fill out the scene description, associate characters, locations and items. Finally, I fill out the Goal, Conflict and Outcome tab. I used to ignore that but I’ve found filling that out gives me a better perspective on the scene.

I do this for each scene in each chapter till I’m satisfied. I copy the date and the scene description in my timeline Excel file. I might find I need more scenes and chapters than I think I do.

This is about it. I have an outline. Used to do more rehashing of the plot sketch but stopped exactly because it was a rehash.

The next step is writing the novel. I’ll be back when I start revising Without Honor.

CPGO – Step 5: Plot Sketch

Posted on by
1

I’ve said good-bye to BiaM and You Can Write a Novel. Smith’s book will be back when I get to the revision stage. BiaM has a little influence in what’s coming next and will have a say when I get to scenes. Then that is it. BiaM encourages outlining while writing for the rest of the book.

Step 5 is the Plot Sketch. The setting sketch was a list of settings in order of appearance with a description of the story at this place, the time period, season and about how many chapters I think it will take to write out the descriptions (which I’m usually wrong about but hey, it’s a starting place).

Now I have this snapshot of a plot, it is time to answer some questions about the plot. I create a new note called Plot Sketch in yWriter.

FDi30D called the Plot Sketch the list of the elements of the story. In all the books, the elements of the story come up. These are the Hero’s Journey, and Story in 3 Acts, Action/Reaction, Quest, Mini Climax, Black Moment, Climax, Denouement and combinations of all of these. The Plot Sketch asks questions about all of these things.

I really like Alicia Rasley’s article, Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes. Here’s a list of questions and answering them gives you a better picture of your plot. So first thing first, I answer her questions about Between Kingdoms. This covers the main character’s motivation and goals. Once I have that down I fill out FDi30D Plot Sketch.

The Plot Sketch starts with the goal and has you identify romance, subplots, conflict, resolution, downtime, black moment and resolution. I now have character motivations and an overview of the plot.

BiaM has two sheets similar to this, the Story Idea Map and the VBIAM Plot Check Sheet. I find the Story Idea Map redundant at this point. The Plot Check Sheet is sectioned off by things that happen in the story and who is there and does it advance the plot. I might come back to this for the revision but for now, I just put it aside.

Next we get down to the meaty part of the operation, scenes.

Writing Ideas – You Don’t Have to Pick Just One

Posted on by
Reply

Mums

I’ve always wanted to write, but I have so many ideas I can’t decide which one to write.

I hear this excuse daily. On writing forums, mailing lists, in person, on social media and in my email. They want to know how to start writing. How to choose the idea.

The answer is all of them.

If your goal is to write then you have to write. It’s not about writing once and not every writing again. Oh yes NaNoWriMo is about just that for a lot of people. And that’s fine. This is not for you.

Take all of your ideas and write them down. Stick them in separate folders.

Pick one up and write. Finish. Repeat.

You need to have a lot of ideas in order to keep writing. One idea isn’t going to get you anywhere. In fact, if you only have one idea and refuse to quit until it is executed perfectly according to your dream, then you will fail. You fall into the trap of contamination and you end up gibbering in the woods somewhere with your only companion a puppet with a KFC bucket on its head.

If too many ideas are keeping you from writing, ask yourself, do I really want to write? Really? Maybe you don’t want to be a writer after all.

This is how life works; you will make time for anything that’s important to you. And all those things you wish you had time for? Not important at all.